Appendix A: Selection of lexical covariates

Lexical covariates are usually used in conceptual processing studies due to the widespread connections among lexical and semantic variables (Petilli et al., 2021; e.g., Pexman & Yap, 2018; Wingfield & Connell, 2022b). Including these covariates—or nuisance variables—in the model allows a more rigorous analysis of the predictors of interest (Sassenhagen & Alday, 2016). In each of the present studies, the covariates were selected out of a group of five variables that had been used as covariates in Wingfield and Connell (2022b), and are widely used (e.g., Petilli et al., 2021). Some of these covariates were highly intercorrelated (\(r\) > .70), as shown below. To avoid the problem of multicollinearity, the maximum zero-order correlation allowed between any two covariates was of \(r\) = \(\pm\).70 (Dormann et al., 2013; Harrison et al., 2018). In cases of higher correlations, the covariate with the largest effect in the model, based on the estimate (β), was selected.

In Studies 2.1 (semantic priming) and 2,2 (semantic decision), the lexical covariates were selected out of five variables, which mirrored those used by Wingfield and Connell (2022b): namely, number of letters (i.e., orthographic length, which we computed in R), word frequency, number of syllables (both the latter from Balota et al., 2007), orthographic Levenshtein distance (Yarkoni et al., 2008) and phonological Levenshtein distance (Suárez et al., 2011; Yap & Balota, 2009). In Study 2.3 (lexical decision), the procedure was more particular, as it served two purposes. First, the variable that had the largest effect out of the five was selected as the language-based predictor of interest (see reason in Study 2.3 in the main text). Second, one variable was selected as a covariate among the remaining four.

All the models included by-participant and by-word random intercepts, as well as by-participant random slopes for every predictor. Below, the correlations and the selection model are shown for each study.

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Pablo Bernabeu, 2022. Licence: CC BY 4.0.
Thesis: https://doi.org/10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1795.

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