Word Frequency Effects Research Articles

Orthographic and root frequency effects in Arabic: Evidence from eye movements and lexical decision.

One of the more studied and robust effects in the reading literature is that of word frequency. Semitic words (e.g., in Arabic or Hebrew) contain roots that indicate the core meaning to which the word belongs. The effects of the frequency of these roots on reading as measured by eye movements is much less understood. In a series of experiments, we investigated and replicated traditional word frequency effects in Arabic: Eye movement measures showed the expected facilitation for high- over low-frequency target words embedded in sentences (Experiment 1). The same was found in response time and accuracy in a lexical-decision task (Experiment 3a). Using target words that were matched on overall orthographic frequency and other important variables but that contained either high- or low-frequency roots, we found no significant influence of root frequency on eye movement measures during sentence reading (Experiment 2). Using the same target words in a lexical-decision task (Experiment 3b), we replicated the absence of root frequency effects on real Arabic word processing. At 1st glance, the results may not appear to be in line with theoretical accounts that postulate early morphological decomposition and root identification when processing Semitic words. However, these results are compatible with accounts where morphological decomposition does occur but is followed by recombination, and under certain conditions recombination costs can eliminate or even reverse root frequency effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Word Frequency Effect in Middle and High School Students: Reading Characteristics of School-Age Using Eye tracking

안구운동추적 기법은 자연스러운 글읽기 과정 중에 이해 처리의 양상을 객관적으로 측정한다는 점에서 읽기 숙련도에 따른 발달적 특성을 파악하는데 의미 있게 활용될 수 있다. 본 연구는 글읽기의 기본 단위라 할 수 있는 단어 수준의 처리 과정을 살펴볼 수 있는 대표적인 변인으로 단어 빈도 효과를 다루었다. 일반 중학생 14명과 고등학생 20명이 연구에 참가하였으며, 실험 자극은 3음절의 고/저빈도 단어를 포함된 문장으로 빈도 외의 요소는 두 조건이 동일하도록 통제하였다. 표적 영역에서 발생한 고정 시간 및 고정 수 에 대한 분석 결과, 두 집단 모두에서 단어 빈도 효과가 확인되었다. 본 연구 결과는 안구운동추적을 통해 읽기 기술이 발달 중인 일반 중고등학생의 문장 처리 특성을 살펴봄으로써 추후 연령을 비롯한 읽기 수준에 따른 글이해 과정의 차이를 알아보기 위한 경험적 토대를 마련하였다는데 의의가 있다.Eye movement data afford researchers valuable temporal information about exactly when in the reading record a given manipulated variable has an effect. One advantage of using eye movements is data are collected online during silent reading; therefore, they are uncontaminated by memory demands, articulation processes, or conscious strategies. In the present study, the eye movements are measured during Korean-speaking middle and high school students’ silent reading tasks. To investigate the word frequency effects, the study employs controlled sentence frames with embedded target words in an experimental design. Word frequency effects are interesting because they can demonstrate if less skilled readers’ mental lexicons are organized according to the same criteria as those of adults. For direct comparison, the participants read 36 experimental sentences using Koh et al.’s (2008) study that contains target words manipulated for high vs. low frequency. The word frequency effects are observed, with significant effects seen in single-fixation duration (cases where only a single fixation is made on a target) and total viewing time (all fixations on a target) eye movement measures. These results indicate that linguistic influences are primary in driving eye movements during reading for middle and high school students. This study suggests that further research should investigate the developmental trend in relationship to chronological age and reading ability. As the understanding of less skilled readers’ eye movement behavior while reading increases, measuring eye movements offers a promising approach to charting individual differences in reading.

Word Frequency Effect in Middle and High School Students: Reading Characteristics of School-Age Using Eye tracking

Word Frequency Effect in Middle and High School Students: Reading Characteristics of School-Age Using Eye tracking

The influence of relatedness proportion on the joint relationship among word frequency, stimulus quality, and semantic priming in the lexical decision task.

In the lexical decision task, the additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency have been used to infer the presence of independent processing stages in visual word recognition. Importantly, this pattern can be moderated by semantic priming, suggesting the presence of a retrospective prime retrieval mechanism that is selectively engaged based on task context (i.e., utility of the primes). We examine the sensitivity of this mechanism in two lexical decision experiments that manipulate stimulus quality, word frequency, and semantic priming. Critically, we studied these joint effects when the proportion of related primes was set at .50 or .25. Results indicated that with a .50 relatedness proportion, a three-way interaction was obtained such that additivity between frequency and stimulus quality was found following related semantic primes, but an overadditive pattern was exhibited following unrelated primes. When the relatedness proportion was reduced to .25, this interaction was eliminated. Furthermore, relatedness proportion affected the magnitude of the stimulus quality by priming interaction but not the frequency by priming interaction. These results are interpreted within the context of a flexible lexical processer that adaptively engages processes in response to task context.

Early Brain Sensitivity to Word Frequency and Lexicality During Reading Aloud and Implicit Reading.

The present study investigated the influence of lexical word properties on the early stages of visual word processing (<250 ms) and how the dynamics of lexical access interact with task-driven top-down processes. We compared the brain’s electrical response (event-related potentials, ERPs) of 39 proficient adult readers for the effects of word frequency and word lexicality during an explicit reading task versus a visual immediate-repetition detection task where no linguistic intention is required. In general, we observed that left-lateralized processes linked to perceptual expertise for reading are task independent. Moreover, there was no hint of a word frequency effect in early ERPs, while there was a lexicality effect which was modulated by task demands: during implicit reading, we observed larger N1 negativity in the ERP to real words compared to pseudowords, but in contrast, this modulation by stimulus type was absent for the explicit reading aloud task (where words yielded the same activation as pseudowords). Thus, data indicate that the brain’s response to lexical properties of a word is open to influences from top-down processes according to the representations that are relevant for the task, and this occurs from the earliest stages of visual recognition (within ~200 ms). We conjectured that the loci of these early top-down influences identified for implicit reading are probably restricted to lower levels of processing (such as whole word orthography) rather than the process of lexical access itself.

Reading Traffic Signs While Driving: Are Linguistic Word Properties Relevant in a Complex, Dynamic Environment?

When driving a vehicle, do we read the words displayed on traffic signs just as we do in more standard conditions? In the driving context, stimulus quality is generally worse, and reading has to be performed at the same time as we are doing other tasks. In the present work, we examined the effects of word frequency and word length on reading in such circumstances. A stimulus presentation mimicking the approach to the traffic sign increased the effect of word frequency, but not the effect of word length, on reading latency. In addition, performing the reading task while driving along a simulated route produced similar results. Therefore, in the context of the driving activity, the advantage of high-frequency over low-frequency words seems to be even more relevant than in standard conditions. Traffic sign designers can consider these results when deciding the most appropriate word in a variable message sign.

Early EEG correlates of word frequency and contextual predictability in reading

ABSTRACTPrevious research into written language comprehension has been equivocal as to whether word frequency and contextual predictability effects share an early time course of processing. Target word frequency (low, high) and its predictability from prior context (low, high) were manipulated across two-sentence passages. Context sentences were presented in full, followed by word-by-word presentation (300 ms SOA) of target sentences. ERPs were analysed across left-to-right and anterior-to-posterior regions of interest within intervals from 50 to 550 ms post-stimulus. The onset of significant predictability effects (50–80 ms) preceded that of frequency (P1, 80–120 ms), while both main effects were generally sustained through the N400 (350–550 ms). Critically, the frequency-predictability interaction became significant in the P1 and was sustained through the N400, although the specific configuration of effects differed across components. The pattern of findings supports an early, chronometric locus of contextual predictability in recognising words during reading.

The influence of parafoveal preview, character transposition, and word frequency on saccadic targeting in Chinese reading.

This article reports the results of an eye-movement experiment which manipulated the frequency and parafoveal preview (i.e., nonword, transposed-character, or identical) of 2-character Chinese target words using a gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). The key findings were that progressive saccades were longer into high- than low-frequency target words, and that this word-frequency effect was more pronounced for identical than transposed previews. These findings suggest that Chinese readers adjust their saccade lengths in response to variables that influence the rate of parafoveal lexical processing. To examine the feasibility of this hypothesis, 2 computer simulations were completed that pitted this dynamic-adjustment account (Liu, Huang, Gao, & Reichle, 2017) against an account in which readers simply move their eyes to a small number of default saccade targets (e.g., the beginning or center of the upcoming word; Yan, Kliegl, Richter, Nuthmann, & Shu, 2010). The simulation results show that the dynamic-adjustment hypothesis more accurately describes our experimental findings using fewer parameters. The theoretical implications of the dynamic-adjustment account of saccadic targeting are discussed relevant to both models of eye-movement control in reading and modes of Chinese word identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

한글 문장 읽기에서 나이에 따른 단어빈도효과 : 안구운동 연구로부터의 증거

This study recorded young and older adults’ eye movements while reading to investigate how word frequency effects are affected by age in Korean reading. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the word frequency of target words to compare the two age groups’ eye movements on the target. The results showed that older adults were longer than young adults in duration measures on the target and older adults had smaller skipping rates than young adults did. In addition, we observed the word frequency effects in some measures. Importantly, there was an interaction effect between the word frequency and the age variable such that word frequency effects were larger in the older adults compared with the young adults. In Experiment 2, we also found the word frequency effects in young adults. Finally, based on the results obtained here, we discussed the characteristics of older adults’ eye movements during natural reading.

의미적 맥락과 단어빈도가 한국어 시각단어 재인에 미치는 영향 : 점화연구

본 연구에서는 시각단어 재인 시 점화-표적 간 의미적 연관성과 단어빈도(표적용언 어간의 빈도)가 어떤 관계를 맺고 있으며, 의미적 맥락과 단어빈도 그리고 두 요인의 관계가 어떤 영향을 미치는가를 고찰했다. 이를 위해 한국어 모어화자 144명을 대상으로 SOA 43ms 차폐점화 어휘판단 과제, SOA 230ms 시각점화 어휘판단 과제 그리고 교차양상 점화 어휘판단 과제를 시행했다. 연구결과를 보면. (i) 모든 과제에서 고빈도 표적이 저빈도 표적보다 더 빨리 처리되었으며, (ii) 모든 과제에서 점화와 의미적으로 관련된 표적을 처리할 때 무관한 표적을 처리할 때보다 반응시간이 짧았고. (iii) 의미적 맥락과 단어빈도 간 상호작용은 SOA 43ms 차폐점화 과제의 저빈도 표적에서만 유의미했다. 끝으로, (iv) 교차양상 과제에서 유의미한 의미점화 효과를 보였으나, 빈도를 나누어 고빈도와 저빈도 표적을 살펴보았을 때는 유의미하지 않았다. 본 연구의 결과는 단어빈도와 의미적 관련성이 한국어 시각 어휘처리에 영향을 주나 자동적 의미점화의 초기시점에서만 의미적 맥락과 단어빈도가 상호작용적 관계를 나타내며, 점화와 표적이 서로 다른 감각경로로 제시될 경우 점화가 표적의 감각경로로 변환됨을 시사한다. 이러한 결과는 어휘처리의 다단계 활성화 모형과 변환가설을 지지하는 것으로 해석할 수 있다.

Parafoveal previews and lexical frequency in natural reading: Evidence from eye movements and fixation-related potentials.

Participants’ eye movements and electroencephalogram (EEG) signal were recorded as they read sentences displayed according to the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. Two target words in each sentence were manipulated for lexical frequency (high vs. low frequency) and parafoveal preview of each target word (identical vs. string of random letters vs. string of Xs). Eye movement data revealed visual parafoveal-on-foveal (PoF) effects, as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects and word frequency effects. Fixation-related potentials (FRPs) showed visual and orthographic PoF effects as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects. Our results replicated the early preview positivity effect (Dimigen, Kliegl, & Sommer, 2012) in the X-string preview condition, and revealed different neural correlates associated with a preview comprised of a string of random letters relative to a string of Xs. The former effects seem likely to reflect difficulty associated with the integration of parafoveal and foveal information, as well as feature overlap, while the latter reflect inhibition, and potentially disruption, to processing underlying reading. Interestingly, and consistent with Kretzschmar, Schlesewsky, and Staub (2015), no frequency effect was reflected in the FRP measures. The findings provide insight into the neural correlates of parafoveal processing and written word recognition in reading and demonstrate the value of utilizing ecologically valid paradigms to study well established phenomena that occur as text is read naturally.

The effects of parafoveal word frequency and segmentation on saccade targeting during Chinese reading.

Two eye-movement experiments are reported in which a boundary paradigm was used to manipulate the presence versus absence of boundaries for high-frequency and low-frequency target words in the parafovea. In Experiment 1, this was done by introducing a blank space after the target words, whereas in Experiment 2 this was done by rendering the target words in red. In both experiments, higher frequency targets engendered longer saccades, whereas the presence of parafoveal word boundaries engendered shorter saccades. This pattern suggests the operation of two countermanding saccade-targeting mechanisms: one that uses parafoveal processing difficulty to adjust saccade lengths and a second that uses word boundaries to direct the eyes toward specific saccade targets. The implications of these findings for models of eye-movement control during reading are discussed, as are suggestions for integrating dynamic-adjustment and default-targeting accounts.

ROC Modelling Data of the Word Frequency Effect: A Formal Model of Visual Word Recognition

This article presents a formal statistical model for assessing the word frequency effect in recognition memory. This topic is relevant because word frequency is the best predictor of performance in recognition memory tasks. Signal Detection Theory was applied using high-frequency and low-frequency words as item-signals. Signal Detection Theory test assumes orthogonality of responses: hits, false alarms, correct rejections, and incorrect rejections. Ninety-six adult male and female students participated in two experiments: one conducted in the laboratory and the other in the class-room. The selected words for memory contained 3 to 5 letters and 1 or 2 syllables to control for length. Significant differences were found between high-frequency and low-frequency words in the number of false alarms for the two experiments. The differences were statistically significant in two experiments. The Cohen effect size was 0.6 and 0.45 respectively. The word frequency effect in first- and second-experiments was F (1, 46) = 4.13, MCE. = 2.34, p = 0.003 and F (1, 46) = 3.71, MCE. = 12.36, p = 0. 01 respectively. A formal model is presented based on the Receiver Operating Characteristic data to assess data trends for high- and low frequency words. Two differentiated models were obtained: a continuous model based on high frequency stimuli and a threshold model based on low frequency stimuli.

Do your eyes give you away? A validation study of eye-movement measures used as indicators for mindless reading

Identifying eye-movement measures as objective indicators of mind wandering seems to be a work in progress. We reviewed research comparing eye movements during self-categorized episodes of normal versus mindless reading and found little consensus regarding the specific measures that are sensitive to attentional decoupling during mind wandering. To address this issue of inconsistency, we conducted a new, high-powered eye-tracking experiment and considered all previously identified mind-wandering indicators. In our experiment, only three measures (reading time, fixation count, and first-fixation duration) positively predicted self-categorized mindless reading. Aside from these single measures, the word-frequency effect was found to be generally less pronounced during mindless-reading than during normal-reading episodes. To additionally test for convergent validity between the objective and subjective mind-wandering measures, we utilized eye-movement measures as well as thought reports, to examine the effect of metacognitive awareness on mind-wandering behavior. We expected that participants anticipating a difficult comprehension test would mind wander less during reading than would those anticipating an easy test. Although we were able to induce metacognitive expectancies about task difficulty, we found no evidence that these difficulty expectancies affected either subjectively reported or objectively measured mind wandering.

Searching for a word in Chinese text: insights from eye movement behaviour

ABSTRACTLocating relevant information in text is an important aspect of the reading process, however relatively few studies have examined this, especially for logographic languages such as Chinese. The present study examines eye movement behaviour during search for a target word in Chinese sentences, compared with reading the sentences for comprehension. Although there were clear effects of word frequency during reading for comprehension, the study shows no evidence for an influence of the word frequency of non-target words on eye movement behaviour during target word search. The results are in line with previous research undertaken in English (Rayner, K., & Fischer, M. H. (1996). Mindless reading revisited: Eye movements during reading and scanning are different. Perception & Psychophysics, 58, 734–747.), such that during search for a target word, eye movement behaviour for non-target words is largely driven by superficial processing of those words. The study also highlights the prevalence of word skipping, indicating that words are often sampled only in visually degraded parafoveal vision during target word search in Chinese.

Word frequency effects in sound change as a consequence of perceptual asymmetries: An exemplar-based model

Empirically-observed word frequency effects in regular sound change present a puzzle: how can high-frequency words change faster than low-frequency words in some cases, slower in other cases, and at the same rate in yet other cases? We argue that this puzzle can be answered by giving substantial weight to the role of the listener. We present an exemplar-based computational model of regular sound change in which the listener plays a large role, and we demonstrate that it generates sound changes with properties and word frequency effects seen in corpora. In particular, we consider the experimentally-supported assumption that high-frequency words may be more robustly recognized than low-frequency words in the face of acoustic ambiguity. We show that this assumption allows high-frequency words to change at the same rate as low-frequency words when a phoneme category moves without encroaching on the acoustic space of another, faster than low-frequency words when it moves toward another, and slower than low-frequency words when it moves away from another. We discuss how these predicted word frequency effects apply to different types of sound changes that have been observed in the literature. Importantly, these frequency effects follow from assumptions regarding processes in perception, not production. Frequency-based asymmetries in perception predict different frequency effects for different kinds of sound change.

Adult Age Differences in Effects of Text Spacing on Eye Movements During Reading.

Large-scale changes in text spacing, such as removing the spaces between words, disrupt reading more for older (65+ years) than younger (18–30 years) adults. However, it is unknown whether older readers show greater sensitivity to simultaneous subtle changes in inter-letter and inter-word spacing encountered in everyday reading. To investigate this, we recorded young and older adults’ eye movements while reading sentences in which inter-letter and inter-word spacing was normal, condensed (10 and 20% smaller than normal), or expanded (10 or 20% larger than normal). Each sentence included either a high or low frequency target word, matched for length and contextual predictability. Condensing but not expanding text spacing disrupted reading more for the older adults. Moreover, word frequency effects (the reading time cost for low compared to high frequency words) were larger for the older adults, consistent with aging effects on lexical processing in previous research. However, this age difference in the word frequency effect did not vary across spacing conditions, suggesting spacing did not further disrupt older readers’ lexical processing. We conclude that visual rather than lexical processing is disrupted more for older readers when text spacing is condensed and discuss this finding in relation to common age-related visual deficits.

The effects of word frequency and typographical enhancement on incidental vocabulary learning in reading

ABSTRACTThis study examines the effects of word frequency and typographical enhancement (i.e., words in bold) on the learning of single words in Spanish L2 reading activities in a classroom setting. Learners read a text in which target words appearing in bold occurred one, five or 10 times. A parallel text was also provided in which those same words appeared un-bolded. Students were tested three times on both spelling and meaning of the target words: before, immediately after and two weeks after the reading activity. Results show that: (1) after five or 10 encounters, both spelling and meaning recognition skills increase; (2) words appearing in bold only lead to learning gains at a form recognition level immediately after the test is taken and do not contribute to the acquisition of meaning in the post-test; and (3) there is no interaction between typographical enhancement and frequency.

The role of preview validity in predictability and frequency effects on eye movements in reading.

A word's predictability, as measured by its cloze probability, has a robust influence on the time a reader's eyes spend on the word, with more predictable words receiving shorter fixations. However, several previous studies using the boundary paradigm have found no apparent effect of predictability on early reading time measures when the reader does not have valid parafoveal preview of the target word. The present study directly assesses this pattern in two experiments, demonstrating evidence for a null effect of predictability on first fixation and gaze duration with invalid preview, supported by Bayes factor analyses. While the effect of context independent word frequency is shown to survive with invalid preview, consistent with previous studies, the effect of predictability is eliminated with both unrelated word previews and random letter string previews. These results suggest that a word's predictability influences early stages of orthographic processing, and does so only when perceptual evidence is equivocal, as is the case when the word is initially viewed in parafoveal vision. Word frequency may influence not only early orthographic processing, but also later processing stages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Влияние психолингвистических характеристик слов на протекание ассоциативных процессов

The psycholinguistic variables — word frequency, age of acquisition and etc. — affect the human’s processing of information. In this paper, we explore the effects of the four psycholinguistic variables — word frequency, age of acquisition, word familiarity and imageability — on the associative processes, that is, on the probability that words will appear as the associations for verbal stimuli; this probability isestimated by association abundance (the amount of different stimulus words which elicit these associations in the associative dictionary). The study is done using 286 words for which ones there are normative data for all variables. The main goal of this study is to find out the independent effects of each abovementioned psycholinguistic variables on association abundance. This is done by determining whether the including of one of the psycholinguistic variables as an additional predictor in the regression equation where the criterion is association abundance and the predictors — some other psycholinguistic variables leads to the significant increasing of the efficiency of the prediction. The received results show the independent effects of word frequency and age of acquisition on association abundance (the increasing of the efficiency of the prediction is significant, p&lt;0.001 in both cases). These effects for word familiarity and word imageabilityhaven’t been detected.