nons

Nons is a term sometimes used in linguistics and cognitive psychology to refer to nonsense words or nonwords that are used as stimuli in experiments. In this sense, nons are pronounceable strings that do not carry semantic content in the language being studied. Researchers may generate nons to isolate phonological or orthographic processing from meaning, allowing a clearer examination of how people decode and recognize unfamiliar word forms.

Nons can be created to follow the phonotactic rules of a language, producing pseudowords that feel plausible to native speakers. They can also be designed to deliberately violate those rules to study participants’ sensitivity to illegal phoneme sequences. The distinction between nons, pseudowords, and other nonlexical form types is primarily methodological and depends on how closely the stimuli resemble real words and how much semantic information is intended to be avoided.

Typical uses include reading aloud tasks, where participants pronounce nons to assess phonological decoding, and lexical decision tasks, where the speed and accuracy of distinguishing real words from nonwords are measured. Nons are valuable because they provide control over variables such as length, syllable structure, and sound correspondence, enabling researchers to probe processes like phonological working memory, lexical access, and speech perception without confounding semantic effects.

In practice, the term nons is not universally standardized and may overlap with terms like nonwords or pseudowords. Researchers may adopt different conventions for labeling stimuli, but the underlying principle remains: nons are constructed linguistic forms used to study language processing in a controlled, semantically empty context.