How It Works
What are Pseudowords?
Synonymous with "fake words", pseudowords are words that are phonologically "legal" in a language, but which have no meaning. They have typical phonological characteristics, but no semantic content – "blorp" or "jippy", for example.
Why Use Pseudowords?
Pseudowords are commonly used in psycholinguistics experiments. For instance, to find out where phonological processing occurs in the brain, we could observe which brain regions are activated as participants listen to words. However, to be sure that the activated areas you observe are in fact activated as a result of having to phonologically process speech, we need to minimize the chances that activation is occurring due to other types of processing, such as semantic (meaning-related) processing. In such cases, we use pseudowords!