Total Number Of Words Research Articles

The Relationship between Computer Languages and Problem-Solving Style

This study investigated the influence of prior computer experience on writing computer programs in natural English. A multiple regression analysis revealed that knowing more computer languages predicted more total number of words in the English programs. It was also found that subjects who knew both PASCAL and BASIC used more loops in their English programs than subjects who knew BASIC but not PASCAL. Types of loops used and the implications of loop structure for problem-solving style are discussed.

Locus of control and depth of processing in children.

A children's locus of control (LOC) measure was administered to 153 sixth-grade students who were subsequently assigned to one of four processing conditions. Groups were instructed to encode a word list semantically, acoustically, orthographically, or any way the S wished and to retain them for a later recognition test. Criterion variables included total number of words correctly recognized as well as four varieties of distractor choices. Support was provided for the contention that externals tend to encode stimuli in more superficial ways than do internals, although the amount of variance in recognition memory accounted for by the LOC measure was small. Encoding conditions had a marked effect on retention, and false distractor choices appeared to reflect the level at which stimulus words were encoded.

Improvement in referral practices elicited by a redesigned request format.

Significantly improved clinical information was supplied by referring physicians when a redesigned referral form was introduced. Although this form provided less space, the specific questions that were included elicited an increase in the total number of words and useful clinical information that was supplied. In turn, the better clinical information helped the radiologist produce an improved report for the referring physician. These positive changes were noted with the introduction of the new form, and they persisted when the form was reevaluated 12 months later.

Willa Cather and The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy

As with many other writers of fiction whose foundations were laid in journalism, the total number of words which came from the pen of Willa Cather will never be known. Besides the great number of unsigned articles which appeared in numerous newspapers and other publications, Cather also published several stories, articles and reviews under pseudonyms. John P. Hinz, Bernice Slote, Mildred R. Bennett, Virginia Faulkner, William M. Curtin and others have done prodigious work in the identification and publication of several such works.' Even so, there remain in the archives of The Home Monthly, McClure's Magazine and other publications several likely candidates for Catherian ascription. It is well known that Cather herself wished to suppress much of her early writing and on several occasions refused permission to have it reprinted: . . in her later years Willa Cather closed the door firmly on all but a fraction of the work that had preceded O Pioneers! and did her best to discourage inquiry concerning it.2 Cather held the copyright on many of her early stories and was able to prevent republication. She compared her attitude to that of an apple-grower careful of his reputation: the fruit that was below standard must be left forgotten on the ground; only the sound apples should be collected.3 Only since the early works have come into the public domain have they been generally available to Cather scholarship. Gradually, we have come to know and appreciate the

The Effects of Oral Instructions and Training on the Expansion of Written Language

This single-subject experiment explored the effect of oral instructions and training on the expansion of written language using a reversal design. The subject, a twelve-year-old boy who attended a tutorial clinic, wrote about a stimulus picture four times a week during a twelve-week period. Productivity was based on the number of words and sentences used in the composition; the type-token ratio for vocabulary diversity was also charted. During the intervention phases of the experiment, the tutor added oral instructions to write many words and ideas. These additional instructions increased the subject's productivity. As the oral instructions were changed, the number of total words and sentences also changed. When a simple training session was provided prior to the writing of a composition, the subject wrote more adjectives.

Oral Language Responses of Children With Reading Difficulties

A significant multivariate difference was found between the oral language performance of 44 children labeled reading disabled in the second, fourth, and sixth grades and 59 children of comparable grades who were attending regular classrooms and were free from reading disorders. The possible effects of sex, grade level, ethnicity, nonverbal problem-solving ability, and socioeconomic status were considered. Sex was a significant factor. Females scored higher on morphological and grammatical/syntactical measures. Male subjects used more different words than did females. The difference in language development was examined by (a) an analysis of the ability to spontaneously use grammatical and syntactical rules of the English language; (b) a comparison of the total number of words used compared with the number of different words; (c) an analysis of the relative proportion of use of various parts of speech; (d) an analysis of the average length of utterances; and (e) the number of verbal prompts necessary to evoke an oral response.

Developmental Progression in Play Behavior of Children between Nine and Thirty Months: II: Spontaneous Play and Language Development

The relationship between play behavior displayed in a structured play situation and language development was studied cross-sectionally in 85 children at eight age--evels between nine and 30 months. There were no correlations between types of play behavior, in particular functional play (appropriate use of objects on the child's own body), representational play (appropriate use of objects on a doll or another person), or symbolic play (substitution of present objects for absent ones) and speech measures such as total number of words and of vocalizations, number of different words and different vocalizations, and number of sentences. Identification of objects upon verbal request was not related to any type of play behavior, but comprehension of verbal requests for functional or representational play was postively correlated with the display of functional or representational play. The children did not respond to verbal requests for functional or representational play unless these types of play behavior were part of their spontaneous play repertoire. Understanding of prepositions seemed to be related to spatial concepts expressed in play behavior, such as container play or arranging chairs around a table and setting the table.

Word—Initial and Word—Final Ngram Frequencies

Every word-initial and word-final letter cluster, or ngram, that occurred in 30 or more different words in one million words of running text is listed along with the number of different words and the total number of words it appeared in. The relation of this list to other counts is discussed.

Computer-assisted analysis of written language: Assessing the written language of deaf children

Methods for assessing the written language of deaf students are reviewed. The merits and shortcomings of various objective indicators that have traditionally been used are discussed. These include various measures of total output, such as total number of words or sentences, and simple measures of diversity of usage such as the type-token ratio. There have been several attempts in recent years to include objective measures of syntactic complexity as part of an overall language assessment program. The use of a computer to assist teachers in the derivation of such syntactic measures is described. Two illustrative examples are provided. The first shows how the computer system performs a detailed syntactic analysis on a typical sentence taken from the written language of a deaf child. The second example shows how the system provides a summary analysis of several sentences in a theme. A statistical count of the syntactic forms used in the written language sample is provided at the end of the analysis.

Free Association Test (FAT) scoring and analysis program

The Free Association Test (FAT) is designed for quantitative assessment of anxiety and hostility levels (Gottschalk & GIeser, 1969; Gottschalk, Winget, & GIeser, 1969). Each subject is requested to sit alone in a room and record a 5to 7-min tape on personal experiences reflective of feelings. Subsequently, the tape is transcribed, and the resulting typescript is evaluated by means of content analysis for specific forms of anxiety (Death, Mutilation, Separation, Guilt, Shame, Diffuse) and hostility (Outward Overt, Outward Covert, Inward, Ambivalent). Scores for the six types of anxiety are combined into a summary measure, Total Anxiety. Summary measures for Total Hostility Outward and Total Inward and Ambivalent Hostility are obtained in a similar manner. Gottschalk and GIeser (1969) have developed sets of normative scores which can be used for comparative purposes with samples from several different populations (Silbergeld, Manderscheid, & O'Neill, 1975). Although the test is usually employed for solitary individuals, recent work also suggests the utility of a dyadic test for married couples (Silbergeld & Manderscheid, 1976). A detailed procedure is required to derive final scores on each variable (see Gottschalk et al., 1969). For each nonsummary measure, the total weight equals the sum of products of subcategory frequencies and respective weighting factors. In general, the subcategories and weighting factors distinguish verbal references to self, animate others, inanimate objects, and denial. To adjust for the total number of words in the typescript and to state results in terms of score per 100 words, the total weight is multiplied by 100/(total number of words). The resultant product is called the score. The final corrected score is calculated by taking the square root ofthe sum of the raw score and 50/(total number of words). Addition of SO/(total number of words) to the raw score has the effect of minimizing the correlation between the corrected score and the total number of words. The square root

Test of the language-aggression hypothesis.

This study tested the hypothesis that language is related to aggression in two ways: that relatively low levels of proficiency in the use of language should be associated with relatively high levels of observable aggression and that high levels of language proficiency should be associated with low levels of aggression. The vocabulary subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), the Metropolitan Achievement Test in Reading, the total number of words spoken during a free speech session, and the number of different words used during that session constituted the language measures. Aggression of 132 subjects, ranging in age from 9 to 13 yr., was measured using an adaptation of the physical and verbal aggression categories used by Walters, Pearce, and Dahms (1957). The results supported both predictions for the comparisons between black subjects and Puerto Rican subjects but not for the white subjects.

Length variables in sentence imitation.

The present study was designed to determine which of three indices of sentence length most effectively predicted pre-schooler's correct sentence imitations : total number of words; number of content words only; or the density of content words within a sentence. Twenty-four pre-school children, mean age 3.11 years, were asked to imitate 32 sentences which varied in total number of words, number of content words, and lexical density. Analysis of the childrens' correct responses, using verbatim imitation criteria, revealed that the ordering of sentences obtained was one not predicted by any of the three length indices. Re-examination of the sentences suggested that the number of morphemes (the number of meaningful units), rather than the number of orthographically defined words, might be the appropriate counting index. A significant Spearman rank order correlation (r = + 0.67, 30 d.f., p <0.01) was found between morpheme length and sentence difficulty. It was concluded that morpheme length rather than word length may be a significant variable affecting pre-school children's sentence imitation performance.

Studies in Interactive Communication: III. Effects of Similar and Dissimilar Communication Channels and Two Interchange Options on Team Problem Solving

16 teams of 2 college students each solved four credible “real world” problems for which computer systems have been or could be useful. Each of the 4 problems was solved on four successive days. A team member sent messages either by voice or by typewriter, and every team was tested with all 4 combinations of the 2 message channels assigned to individual team members. Half the teams could interrupt their partners at any time; half could not. Dependent measures were time to solution, number of messages exchanged, total number of words used per team, message length, messages communicated per minute of channel time, and words communicated per minute of channel time. The results show that communication by voice is much more rapid and wordy than is communication by typewriter. Giving Ss the freedom to interrupt had no effect on the time required to solve problems, on the number of words used in the solution of problems, or on the rate at which words were communicated. When Ss had the freedom to interrupt, they “packaged” their words differently: they exchanged more messages, messages were shorter, and messages were exchanged with greater frequency per unit time. Practice effects were almost entirely absent. A number of significant differences were attributable to the problems and the jobs assigned to the two communicators.

ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF SEQUENTIAL REINFORCEMENT CONTINGENCIES ON ASPECTS OF COMPOSITION1

The procedures of manipulating consequent events were applied to the problems of teaching composition in a fifth-grade remedial classroom. Three objective aspects of composition, total number of words, number of different words, and number of new words, were selected for manipulation and reinforcement contingencies were sequentially applied to these components. The writing output of all subjects was greatly increased.

Influence of Utterance Length upon Bilabial Closure Duration for /p/

An inverse relationship exists between the duration of the bilabial closure for /p/ in the first word of an utterance and the total number of words in the utterance.

Effect of context on verbal recall

Sixty-seven S s were presented with samples of English text in which one word had been replaced by a blank and were allowed 15 min to list all the words that might have been the one deleted. The context surrounding the blank varied from 0 to 40 words. Increasing the amount of context decreased the number of words that S could produce to fit the context, but increased the proportional recall rate, that is, the proportion of the total number of words recallable that was produced per unit time. The results were interpreted in terms of a search model for verbal recall, in which the context determines the number of target words, the number of items in memory through which S searches for target words, and the rate at which he scans these items.

Temporal numerosity estimates for word lists

The Ss estimated the number of items seen when sequences of words were presented tachistoscopically at presentation rates from 4 to 16 words/sec. The degree of underestimation increased with increasing rates of presentation, and the maximum average counting rate was between 6 and 7 words/sec. In the second phase of the study, they were asked to recall as many words as possible from short sequences of words presented at rapid rates, as well as to estimate the number of words seen but not available for recall. The total number of words seen, as judged from these two reports, agreed closely with the counting rates. The number of words correctly recalled decreased with increasing presentation rates.

Aphasic word identification as a function of logical relationship and association strength.

Aphasic word identification as a function of logical relationship and restricted association strength of clues was investigated to (1) establish the relative efficiency of strategies in eliciting word identificatons, and (2) compare aphasic and nonaphasic performance on the experimental task. Subjects were eleven aphasic adults from the University of Michigan aphasia program and eleven randomly selected college students. All aphasic subjects had completed college premorbidly. The word identification task was designed to elicit twenty target words (nouns). For each target word four clue words were selected which represented the following relationships to the target word: (1) logical, high association, (2) infralogical, high association, (3) in-fralogical, low association, and (4) logical, low association. Analysis of variance of the data indicated no significant difference between the groups in total number of words identified. The effect of the different clue combinations on word identification and the interaction between subjects and treatments were highly significant. The findings suggest similar patterns of facilitation of target word identification for both subject groups. However, high logical and high infralogical clues were more efficient in eliciting target words from nonaphasic than from aphasic subjects, while low infralogical and low logical clues were equally efficient.

Note on Suggestibility and Clustering

In recalling lists of words composed of representatives of a number of categories but presented in a random order, Ss tend to cluster words of the same category. This finding has been called clustering. Clustering has been shown to be a function of a number of variables and subject to alternate interpretations (Kintsch, 1970, pp. 247-253). I was unable to find any studies that related clustering to suggestibility. Indeed, most studies in clustering manipulate list composition or procedural variables rather than individual differences among Ss. This study relates suggestibility and clustering. Two classes were first administered the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (Shor & Orne, 1962). Approximately 1 mo. later the same classes were run in a clustering study. The procedure used with the Harvard scale was that specified in the instructions. The list and procedure used in the clustering study was identical with the original work of Bousfield (1953). A slightly modified Ratio Repetition (RR) measure was used to score for clustering. The clustering data were also anaIyzed for the total number of words recalled and the number of intrusions (separately for within and outside of category). Complete data on 50 Ss were available for analysis. Adequate variability was produced on all measures except for the outside-ofcategory intrusions. Correlations, computed between the suggestion measure and clustering, number-of-words, and categorical intrusions, in the same order as above, were: .05, .14, and -.12. There were too few non-categorical intrusions (total of 7) for analysis. Alternate measures of clustering might have been used but in view of the above results and the high intercorrelations among the various measures (Shuell, 1969) the results would not be worth the effort. Thus, suggestibility does not appear to relate to the various retention measures used in studies of recall of lists whose items belong to several categories.

A note on syntactic relationships in nonfluency.

The spontaneous verbalization patterns of eight adult stutterers were analyzed as each paraphrased a story which previously had been read silently. This verbal production was then analyzed in accordance with current syntactic concepts. Moments of nonfluency were categorized according to the syntactic units in which they were located. The initial analysis based on function (subject, verb, object/complement/optional adverb units) yielded a result indicative of a trend toward greater occurrence of nonfluency in the latter type of unit which also tended to occur postverbally. The analysis based on sequence, irrespective of traditional grammatical function, indicated an even more positive trend favoring the postverbal unit. The further analysis of the postverbal unit in terms of content/function word items, total number of words, and structural expansion indicated significant correlations between certain types of expansion and nonfluency.