Observes in a lexical decision task that polysemy effects were identical for high- and low-frequency katakana words; and that in a naming task, although no word frequency effect was observed, there was a significant polysemy effect which was identical for high- and low-frequency words. Discusses implications about the loci of such polysemy and…

Reports the results of experiments with MEDLINE that used lexical statistics such as word-frequency counts to discover hidden connections in medical literature. Discusses problems with relying on bibliographic citations or standard indexing methods to establish a relationship between topics that might profitably be explored by scientific research.…

Presents a method for extracting maximal frequent sequences in a set of documents. A maximal frequent sequence is a sequence of words that is frequent in the document collection and is not contained in any other longer frequent sequence. Frequent maximal sequences can be used as content descriptors for documents. (MES)

E. Hirshman, J. Fisher, T. Henthom, J. Amdt, and A. Passanname (2002) found that Midazolam disrupts the mirror-patterned word-frequency effect for recognition memory by reversing the typical hit-rate advantage for low-frequency words. They noted that this result is consistent with dual-process accounts (e.g., R. C. Atkinson & J. F. Juola, 1974; G.…

Previous work indicates that semantic categorization decisions for nonexemplars (e.g., deciding that TURBAN is not an animal name) are faster for high-frequency words than low-frequency words. However, there is evidence that this result might depend on category size. When narrow categories are used (e.g., Months, Numbers), there is no frequency…

Models of speech production differ on whether phonological neighbourhoods should affect processing, and on whether effects should be facilitatory or inhibitory. Inhibitory effects of large neighbourhoods have been argued to underlie apparent anti-frequency effects, whereby high-frequency default features are more prone to mispronunciation errors…

For more than a century, linguists have been interested in the study of frequent word combinations. The present study investigated a special type of word combination, lexical bundles, defined as a sequence of three or more words that co-occur frequently in a particular register [Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Longman, London,…

The authors report 3 dual-task experiments concerning the locus of frequency effects in word recognition. In all experiments, Task 1 entailed a simple perceptual choice and Task 2 involved lexical decision. In Experiment 1, an underadditive effect of word frequency arose for spoken words. Experiment 2 also showed underadditivity for visual lexical…

In three experiments we explored task-specific effects of syllable-frequency, following Perea and Carreiras' (1998) findings of a facilitative effect during naming and an inhibitory effect during lexical decision. In Experiment 1, an inhibitory effect of first syllable-frequency on articulation duration suggested a process-specific effect during…

Cognitive neuropsychological studies of bilingual patients with aphasia have contributed to our understanding of how the brain processes different languages. The question we asked is whether differences in script have any impact on language processing in bilingual aphasic patients who speak languages with different writing systems: Chinese and…

Previous research has found that native English speakers can judge, with a relatively high degree of accuracy, the frequency of words in the English language. However, there has been little investigation of the ability to judge the frequency of high and middle frequency words. Similarly, the accuracy of EFL teachers' frequency judgements remains…

Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). "Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading…

A study examined and classified the typing vocabulary present in six contemporary texts used in secondary school typing classes. During this examination, the researcher classified words pertaining to the following instructional areas: learning the keyboard letters and numbers, learning machine parts, developing typing speed, and improving typing…

Author examined the development of WORDS system and attempted to place it in an historical framework. (Author/RK)

IT IS GENERALLY ADMITTED THAT THE VOCABULARY OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IS MORE EASILY LEARNED IF IT IS ORGANIZED IN COHERENT SEMANTIC GROUPS AROUND "SITUATIONS" OR "CENTERS OF INTEREST." WHAT IS NEEDED IS A LOGICAL AND NON-ARBITRARY TAXONOMY OF SITUATIONS. WE DISTINGUISH, FIRST, OPEN AND CLOSED SITUATIONS. CLOSED SITUATIONS (FOR EXAMPLE, DAYS OF THE…