Phonology Matters: The Phonological Frequency Effect in Written Chinese

2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes C. Ziegler ◽  
Li Hai Tan ◽  
Conrad Perry ◽  
Marie Montant
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Phonological Information ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Linguistic Property

Does phonology play a role in silent reading? This issue was addressed in Chinese. Phonology effects are less expected in Chinese than in alphabetical languages like English because the basic units of written Chinese (the characters) map directly into units of meaning (morphemes). This linguistic property gave rise to the view that phonology could be bypassed altogether in Chinese. The present study, however, shows that this is not the case. We report two experiments that demonstrate pure phonological frequency effects in processing written Chinese. Characters with a high phonological frequency were processed faster than characters with a low phonological frequency, despite the fact that the characters were matched on orthographic (printed) frequency. The present research points to a universal phonological principle according to which phonological information is routinely activated as a part of word identification. The research further suggests that part of the classic word-frequency effect may be phonological.

scholarly journals Semantic Diversity Accounts for the “Missing” Word Frequency Effect in Stroke Aphasia: Insights Using a Novel Method to Quantify Contextual Variability in Meaning

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2432-2446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hoffman ◽  
Timothy T. Rogers ◽  
Matthew A. Lambon Ralph
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Semantic Dementia ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Control Processes

Word frequency is a powerful predictor of language processing efficiency in healthy individuals and in computational models. Puzzlingly, frequency effects are often absent in stroke aphasia, challenging the assumption that word frequency influences the behavior of any computational system. To address this conundrum, we investigated divergent effects of frequency in two comprehension-impaired patient groups. Patients with semantic dementia have degraded conceptual knowledge as a consequence of anterior temporal lobe atrophy and show strong frequency effects. Patients with multimodal semantic impairments following stroke (semantic aphasia [SA]), in contrast, show little or no frequency effect. Their deficits arise from impaired control processes that bias activation toward task-relevant aspects of knowledge. We hypothesized that high-frequency words exert greater demands on cognitive control because they are more semantically diverse—they tend to appear in a broader range of linguistic contexts and have more variable meanings. Using latent semantic analysis, we developed a new measure of semantic diversity that reflected the variability of a word's meaning across different context. Frequency, but not diversity, was a significant predictor of comprehension in semantic dementia, whereas diversity was the best predictor of performance in SA. Most importantly, SA patients did show typical frequency effects but only when the influence of diversity was taken into account. These results are consistent with the view that higher-frequency words place higher demands on control processes, so that when control processes are damaged the intrinsic processing advantages associated with higher-frequency words are masked.

scholarly journals Word Frequency Effect in Lexical Decision Task: Evidence from Khalkha Mongolian

2019 ◽  
pp. 1954-1964
Author(s):  
Mikhail S. Vlasov ◽  
Tumee Odonchimeg ◽  
Vasha Sainbaiar ◽  
Tat‘iana I. Gromoglasova
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Real Word ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Lexical Memory ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Experimental Findings

In experimental psycholinguistics, one clue into the architecture of lexical memory comes from the presence of robust frequency effects in lexical decision task (LDT), in which subjects judge whether a written stimulus is a real word or a nonword, and processing complexity is measured by reaction time (RT). For example, in LDT the visual word recognition process is facilitated (or inhibited) by word frequency as measured from the representative corpus. Our study verifies the word frequency effect in standard (“yes/no task”) LDT performed by Khalkha Mongolian subjects. The results showed strong weight of word frequency as RTs predictor (R2 = .631, F (1, 28) = 50.57, p < .000, β = .802, t = 7.111, p < .000). Our experimental results also correspond to experimental findings on word frequency effects for Japanese Katakana (syllabic) and Kanji (logographic) words in standard LDT. Such lexical decision “script moderation” could be the actual clue for further LDT experiments (e. g., relatively “deep” Mongolian script vs. “shallow” Cyrillic Mongolian)

Temporal contrast and the word frequency effect.

1979 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. May ◽  
Lauren J. Cuddy ◽  
Janice M. Norton
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Temporal Contrast ◽  
Word Frequency Effect

scholarly journals The word frequency effect and lexical access

1982 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 615-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Segui ◽  
Jacques Mehler ◽  
Uli Frauenfelder ◽  
John Morton
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect

Word Frequency Effect in False Memories

2005 ◽  
Vol 96 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1095-1112E ◽  
Author(s):  
İlyas Göz
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Recognition Test ◽  
Recall Test ◽  
False Memories ◽  
The Other ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Testing Effects ◽  
Trace Theory ◽  
Fuzzy Trace Theory

Fuzzy Trace Theory argues that false memories arise from a weak verbatim memory along with strong encoding of the meaning (gist). The present study simultaneously investigated the effects of the strength of both the gist and the verbatim information on false memories. Exp. 1 was carried out to compare false memories for common and rare words in recall and recognition. In Exp. 2 a control for possible testing effects was added, and participants were given a recognition test with no preceding recall test. Qualitative judgements (Remember vs Know) regarding words judged as old on the recognition test were also collected in Exp. 2. Both experiments showed that false memories were more likely when weak verbatim items occurred along with strong gist (as with common words) than only with weak gist encoding (as with rare words). Moreover, participants were more likely to choose falsely physically similar distractors for rare words than for common words. Semantically similar distractors, on the other hand, were more likely to be selected for common than for rare words. These results provide further support for the fuzzy trace theory explanation of false memories. However, some weaknesses of this model regarding false memories are also discussed.

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