SpaVerb-LD: A megastudy of Spanish verb processing and lexical-semantic dynamics

Abstract

Understanding how verbs are processed during lexical access remains an open theoretical question, as most large-scale evidence has focused on nouns. This megastudy analyzes variables involved in the processing of Spanish verbs through response times obtained in a lexical decision task. The dataset, named SpaVerb-LD (Spanish Verb Lexical Decision), continues the SpaVerb-WN (Spanish Verb Word Naming), allowing direct comparison across tasks. The linear mixed-effects model revealed consistent facilitatory effects of word frequency and neighborhood size and inhibitory effects of word length and age of acquisition (AoA). For the first time in Spanish, we observed a facilitatory effect of word prevalence and an inhibitory effect of verb motor content. Previously reported two-way interactions were also replicated, including those between word prevalence and frequency, prevalence and neighborhood size, and AoA and length. A paradoxical interaction between AoA and word frequency was also identified. Crucially, these interactions indicate that lexical decision performance is shaped by the interplay between lexical and semantic variables, highlighting the role of semantic richness in verb processing. The findings support the view that semantic access is involved in lexical decision even in transparent languages and demonstrate that word prevalence and motor content are key to understanding lexical-semantic verb processing beyond traditional frequency-based accounts.