Frequency of usage as a determinant of recognition thresholds for words.

Solomon, Richard L.; Postman, Leo

doi:10.1037/h0054636

Cited by 258 publications

(176 citation statements)

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“…For example, intact PI priming is found in normal and memoryimpaired subjects tested with pseudowords and unfamiliar words (Bowers, 1994(Bowers, , 1996Cermak et al, 1991;Haist et al, 1991;Keane et al, 1994;Kirsner & Smith, 1974;Postle & Corkin, 1998;Rueckl, 1990;Soloman & Postman, 1952;Whitlow & Cebollero, 1989;Whittlesea & Cantwell, 1987), indicating that the learning is supported by the biasing of prelexical perceptual mechanisms (i.e., the learning cannot take place at the level of lexical representations). Intact PI priming with the unfamiliar words used in the previous experiments would demonstrate a dissociation from WSC priming, suggesting that the two types of priming rely on different mechanisms.…”

Section: Experiments 3 Perceptual Identification Primingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many memory researchers have employed this logic to elucidate the mechanisms of memory. The perceptual nature of PI priming has been demonstrated by robust priming effects with pseudowords or unfamiliar words in healthy subjects (Bowers, 1994(Bowers, , 1996Kirsner & Smith, 1974;Rueckl, 1990;Soloman & Postman, 1952;Whitlow & Cebollero, 1989;Whittlesea & Cantwell, 1987) and in amnesic subjects (Cermak, Verfaellie, Milberg, Letourneau, & Blackford, 1991;Haist et al, 1991;Postle & Corkin, 1998). An absence of nonword lexical decision priming was interpreted by Forbach and colleagues (Forbach et aI., 1974) to be consistent with a modification model oflexical decision priming.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Manipulation of familiarity reveals a necessary lexical component of the word-stem completion priming effect

Postle

Corkin

1999

Mem Cogn

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These experiments were motivated by the idea that many types of nondeclarative memory are byproducts arising from the plasticity that is inherent in much of the nervous system. We hypothesized that two types of repetition priming, word-stem completion (WSC)priming and perceptual identification (PI) priming, rely on different mechanisms because the WSC task and the PI task engage different cognitive and brain processes. Wetested this hypothesis by manipulating word familiarity. The results, impaired WSC priming but intact PI priming with unfamiliar words, indicate that WSC priming relies primarily on a modification mechanism, whereas PI priming relies primarily on an acquisition mechanism. Our conclusions are consistent with component processes theories of nondeclarative memory.

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Section: Experiments 3 Perceptual Identification Primingmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Manipulation of familiarity reveals a necessary lexical component of the word-stem completion priming effect

Postle

Corkin

1999

Mem Cogn

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“…We henceforth use Intelligibility in Isolation as a continuous measure of a word's degree of reduction although we know that a word's intelligibility is determined not only by its degree of reduction but also by other factors, for example its frequency of occurrence in natural speech contexts (e.g., Soloman and Postman 1952;Howes 1954Howes , 1957Newbigging 1961;Savin 1963). We believe that there is a strong relationship between a word's degree of reduction and its intelligibility in isolation.…”

Section: Materials In the Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting acoustically reduced words in spontaneous speech: The role of semantic/syntactic and acoustic cues in context

Ven¹,

Ernestus

Schreuder

2012

Laboratory Phonology

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“…Broadbent, 1967;Neisser, 1967;Newbigging, 1961;Solomon & Postman, 1952). When recognizing tachistoscopically presented words, subjects are likely to guess at a partially recognized stimulus.…”

Section: Frequencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Resolving 20 years of inconsistent interactions between lexical familiarity and orthography, concreteness, and polysemy.

Gernsbacher¹

1984

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

542

431

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Numerous word recognition studies conducted over the past 2 decades are examined. These studies manipulated lexical familiarity by presenting words of high versus low printed frequency and most reported an interaction between printed frequency and one of several second variables, namely, orthographic regularity, semantic concreteness, or polysemy. However, the direction of these interactions was inconsistent from study to study. Six new experiments clarify these discordant results. The first two demonstrate that words of the same low printed frequency are not always equally familiar to subjects. Instead, subjects' ratings of "experiential familiarity" suggest that many of the low-printed-frequency words used in prior studies varied along this dimension. Four lexical decision experiments reexamine the prior findings by orthogonally manipulating lexical familiarity, as assessed by experiential familiarity ratings, with bigram frequency, semantic concreteness, and number of meanings. The results suggest that of these variables, only experiential familiarity reliably affects word recognition latencies. This in turn suggests that previous inconsistent findings are due to confounding experiential familiarity with a second variable.Twenty years of research on word recognition has repeatedly shown that the familiarity of a word greatly affects both the speed and the accuracy of its recognition. More familiar words can be recognized faster and more accurately than less familiar words. Traditionally, lexical familiarity has been operationalized as the frequency with which a word occurs in printed English text. Experimenters typically construct their stimulus sets by consulting one of three widely used indices: Thorndike and Lorge's (1944) Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words, Kučera and Francis's (1967) Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English, or Carroll, Davies, and Richman's (1971) American Heritage Word Frequency Book. Within these corpora, one would find that the English word amount occurs relatively frequently (with an average frequency score of 110 occurrences per million words of text), whereas the Copyright 1984 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.Requests for reprints should be sent to Morton Ann Gernsbacher, who is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1227. 1 Experiential familiarity ratings were collected on all (126) of the low-printed-frequency homographic and non-homographic words presented in the Rubenstein et al. (1970) and Rubenstein et al. (1971b) and Forster and Bednall (1976) studies, with the same procedures described in the Method section of Experiment 2. The results of the analyses performed on these ratings mirrored the results found in the original lexical decision task (for the Forster & Bednall, 1976, study) and the results presented by Clark (1973) The Effect of Printed FrequencyHowes and Solomon (1951) reported that printed frequency could account for approximately half of the variance found in tachistoscopic thre...

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Frequency of usage as a determinant of recognition thresholds for words.

Cited by 258 publications

References 14 publications

Manipulation of familiarity reveals a necessary lexical component of the word-stem completion priming effect

Manipulation of familiarity reveals a necessary lexical component of the word-stem completion priming effect

Predicting acoustically reduced words in spontaneous speech: The role of semantic/syntactic and acoustic cues in context

Resolving 20 years of inconsistent interactions between lexical familiarity and orthography, concreteness, and polysemy.

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