Controlling for Lexical Factors in the Word Auditory Recognition and Recall Measure.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to confirm that lexical factors associated with the Word Auditory Recognition and Recall Measure (WARRM) items have minimal impact WARRM scores. As the WARRM test was designed to minimize the impact of lexical factors, we hypothesized that lexical factors would have no effect on WARRM recognition or recall. This report provides a complementary analysis to the original study. Generalized linear mixed models were applied to examine the effects of lexical factors (frequency, neighborhood density, neighborhood frequency) on the WARRM recognition and recall scores. There were no significant effects of lexical factors on WARRM recognition or recall. These null effects were attributed to selection and distribution of words on the WARRM, and the balancing of lexical factors for each set size. Word selection and test design of the WARRM successfully controlled for potential effects of lexical factors on recognition and recall.