The role of word frequency and contextual diversity in visual word recognition: a mini review

Abstract

Contextual diversity refers to the number of contexts in which a word appears. It is traditionally believed that word frequency is an important factor affecting lexical access, but the presence of contextual diversity challenges the position of word frequency in lexical cognition. The research on contextual diversity and word frequency is mainly focused on two fields, namely word recognition and word learning. However, research outcomes concerning the mapping between contextual diversity and word frequency are inconsistent with each other: 1) Contextual diversity can replace word frequency, and is better than word frequency in terms of word recognition; 2) Word frequency and contextual diversity are two different variables that affect word recognition, both of which independently affect word recognition. No definite conclusion about the relationship between the two has been reached yet. Finally, we highlight topics that are in need of future systematic research.

SUBTLEX-CAT: Subtitle word frequencies and contextual diversity for Catalan

“…Furthermore, fixation durations are shorter for the former than for the later in sentence-reading tasks (Plummer, Perea, & Rayner, 2014). An advantage for high-CD words has also been observed in the acquisition of new vocabulary (Rosa, Tapia, & Perea, 2017; see also Huang, 2017, for a review). As for the nature of the CD effect, considering that word frequency and CD are highly correlated, a common mechanism for both effects might be expected.…”