scholarly journals The effect of convolving word length, word frequency, function word predictability and first pass reading time in the analysis of a fixation-related fMRI dataset

Data in Brief ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 104171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin T. Carter ◽  
Steven G. Luke
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Frequency Function ◽  
Function Word ◽  
First Pass ◽  
Word Predictability

scholarly journals Effects of Lexical Variables on Silent Reading Comprehension in Individuals With Aphasia: Evidence From Eye Tracking

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (9) ◽  
pp. 2589-2602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gayle DeDe
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
Word Class ◽  
First Pass ◽  
Pass Through

Purpose Previous eye-tracking research has suggested that individuals with aphasia (IWA) do not assign syntactic structure on their first pass through a sentence during silent reading comprehension. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the time course with which lexical variables affect silent reading comprehension in IWA. Three lexical variables were investigated: word frequency, word class, and word length. Methods IWA and control participants without brain damage participated in the experiment. Participants read sentences while a camera tracked their eye movements. Results IWA showed effects of word class, word length, and word frequency that were similar to or greater than those observed in controls. Conclusions IWA showed sensitivity to lexical variables on the first pass through the sentence. The results are consistent with the view that IWA focus on lexical access on their first pass through a sentence and then work to build syntactic structure on subsequent passes. In addition, IWA showed very long rereading times and low skipping rates overall, which may contribute to some of the group differences in reading comprehension.

scholarly journals Does diacritics‐based lexical disambiguation modulate word frequency, length, and predictability effects? An eye‐movements investigation of processing Arabic diacritics

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0259987
Author(s):  
Ehab W. Hermena ◽  
Sana Bouamama ◽  
Simon P. Liversedge ◽  
Denis Drieghe
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Lexical Ambiguity ◽  
Bias Effect ◽  
Lexical Ambiguity Resolution ◽  
Total Fixation ◽  
Lexical Disambiguation ◽  
High Incidence ◽  
First Pass

In Arabic, a predominantly consonantal script that features a high incidence of lexical ambiguity (heterophonic homographs), glyph-like marks called diacritics supply vowel information that clarifies how each consonant should be pronounced, and thereby disambiguate the pronunciation of consonantal strings. Diacritics are typically omitted from print except in situations where a particular homograph is not sufficiently disambiguated by the surrounding context. In three experiments we investigated whether the presence of disambiguating diacritics on target homographs modulates word frequency, length, and predictability effects during reading. In all experiments, the subordinate representation of the target homographs was instantiated by the diacritics (in the diacritized conditions), and by the context subsequent to the target homographs. The results replicated the effects of word frequency (Experiment 1), word length (Experiment 2), and predictability (Experiment 3). However, there was no evidence that diacritics-based disambiguation modulated these effects in the current study. Rather, diacritized targets in all experiments attracted longer first pass and later (go past and/or total fixation count) processing. These costs are suggested to be a manifestation of the subordinate bias effect. Furthermore, in all experiments, the diacritics-based disambiguation facilitated later sentence processing, relative to when the diacritics were absent. The reported findings expand existing knowledge about processing of diacritics, their contribution towards lexical ambiguity resolution, and sentence processing.

Picture-naming agreement in monolingulas and biliguals

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith P. Goggin ◽  
Patricia Estrada ◽  
Ronald P. Villarreal
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Picture Naming ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Language Skill ◽  
Frequency Word ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Name Agreement ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTName agreement in Spanish and English in response to 264 pictures was assessed in monolinguals and in bilinguals, who varied in rated skill in the two languages. Most of the pictures were adapted from a standardized set of line drawings of common objects (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980). Name agreement decreased as language skill decreased, and agreement was lower when labels were given in Spanish rather than in English. The relationship between name agreement and word frequency, word length, and (in the case of English) age of acquisition was assessed; both word frequency and word length were found to be related to agreement. Modal responses given by monolingual subjects were nearly identical in the two languages, and the types of non-modal responses were affected by both naming language and language skill.

scholarly journals ZIPF'S LAW AND RANDOM TEXTS

2002 ◽  
Vol 05 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAMON FERRER i CANCHO ◽  
RICARD V. SOLÉ
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Word Length ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
A Priori Information ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
Priori Information ◽  
Random Text

Random-text models have been proposed as an explanation for the power law relationship between word frequency and rank, the so-called Zipf's law. They are generally regarded as null hypotheses rather than models in the strict sense. In this context, recent theories of language emergence and evolution assume this law as a priori information with no need of explanation. Here, random texts and real texts are compared through (a) the so-called lexical spectrum and (b) the distribution of words having the same length. It is shown that real texts fill the lexical spectrum much more efficiently and regardless of the word length, suggesting that the meaningfulness of Zipf's law is high.

scholarly journals Please stop using word frequency data that are likely to be word length effects in disguise

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Brysbaert ◽  
Denis Drieghe
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Frequency Data ◽  
Human Data ◽  
Length Effects

Reichle et al. claim to successfully simulate a frequency effect of 60% on skipping rate in human data, whereas the original article reports an effect of only 4%. We suspect that the deviation is attributable to the length of the words in the different conditions, which implies that E-Z Reader is wrong in its conception of eye guidance between words.

A Neural Signature of Phonological Access: Distinguishing the Effects of Word Frequency from Familiarity and Length in Overt Picture Naming

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Graves ◽  
Thomas J. Grabowski ◽  
Sonya Mehta ◽  
Jean K. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Word Production ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Processing Cost ◽  
Left Posterior ◽  
Whole Word

Cognitive models of word production correlate the word frequency effect (i.e., the fact that words which appear with less frequency take longer to produce) with an increased processing cost to activate the whole-word (lexical) phonological representation. We performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects produced overt naming responses to photographs of animals and manipulable objects that had high name agreement but were of varying frequency, with the purpose of identifying neural structures participating specifically in activating whole-word phonological representations, as opposed to activating lexical semantic representations or articulatory-motor routines. Blood oxygen level-dependent responses were analyzed using a parametric approach based on the frequency with which each word produced appears in the language. Parallel analyses were performed for concept familiarity and word length, which provided indices of semantic and articulatory loads. These analyses permitted us to identify regions related to word frequency alone, and therefore, likely to be related specifically to activation of phonological word forms. We hypothesized that the increased processing cost of producing lower-frequency words would correlate with activation of the left posterior inferotemporal (IT) cortex, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Scan-time response latencies demonstrated the expected word frequency effect. Analysis of the fMRI data revealed that activity in the pSTG was modulated by frequency but not word length or concept familiarity. In contrast, parts of IT and IFG demonstrated conjoint frequency and familiarity effects, and parts of both primary motor regions demonstrated conjoint effects of frequency and word length. The results are consistent with a model of word production in which lexical-semantic and lexical-phonological information are accessed by overlapping neural systems within posterior and anterior language-related cortices, with pSTG specifically involved in accessing lexical phonology.

The Relations of Stuttering to Word Length and Word Frequency

1966 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 584-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Soderberg
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Word Lists

Twenty stutterers recorded nine 10-word lists in the presence of a single listener. The word lists were composed of combinations of three levels of word length and three levels of word frequency. An attempt was made to equate the word lists for stress of initial syllables, grammatical function, and initial sounds of words. The results agree with those of previous studies that have found a significantly greater frequency of stuttering to be associated with increases of word length and decreases of word frequency. However, the findings suggested that word length was the more potent of the two variables in effect on the frequency of stuttering.

Lexical and Sublexical Components of Age-related Changes in Neural Activation during Visual Word Identification

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wythe L. Whiting ◽  
David J. Madden ◽  
Linda K. Langley ◽  
Laura L. Denny ◽  
Timothy G. Turkington ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Visual Word Identification

Positron emission tomography data (Madden, Langley, et al., 2002) were analyzed to investigate adult age differences in the relation between neural activation and the lexical (word frequency) and sublexical (word length) components of visual word identification. The differential influence of these components on reaction time (RT) for word/nonword discrimination (lexical decision) was generally similar for the two age groups, with word frequency accounting for a greater proportion of lexical decision RT variance relative to word length. The influence of word length on RT, however, was relatively greater for older adults. Activation in regions of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex was related to the RT changes associated with word frequency and length for older adults, but not for younger adults. Specifically, older adults' frequency effects were related to activation in both anterior (Brodmann's area [BA] 37) and posterior (BAs 17 and 18) regions of the occipito-temporal pathway, whereas word length effects were only associated with posterior activation (BA 17). We conclude that aging affects the neural mechanisms supporting word identification performance although behavioral measures of this ability are generally constant as a function of age.

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