The effect of mental strategy in lexical training upon improving phychometric reaction time

The experiment purposes to assess which type of mental strategy in training lexical abilities has the best reaction time improvement. Three groups of 16 persons each (equal men-women), equalized distributed as lexical performance after a pre-evaluated test were trained three days each using one of three type of methods - icon-nonlexical, graphemic-letter and semantic-icon-lexical mixed. We assess reaction time improvement for each group at: icon, letter and semantic lexical decision tasks using a Romanian patented psycho-verbal stimulation interface. Results proved the best results were for specific task training, and the fact that semantic training develops also sensorial-letter decoding abilities, but icon and letter recognition (non-semantic) training do not improve semantic decoding, but can even worsen comprehensive reading.