Research was conducted to show that the computer can assist human beings in determining which words in a Navy training manual need further clarification. The computer scanned a chapter of a training manual (9800 words long) and separated all words of two or more syllables into an "assumed audience vocabulary" (i.e., words the audience would be…

The experiment employed Sternberg's procedure to investigate the effects of presentation and test modalities (auditory or visual), and number of presentations on the processing rate of monosyllabic words of varying graphemic and phonemic length. Twenty college students and 20 sixth graders served as Ss. Each S received all conditions and lists in…

Structured Key-word Analysis is a computerizable technique for objectively analyzing the natural language responses to open-end questions. Key-words are frequently used content words. Pairs of key-words that appear together in protocols either extremely often or extremely seldom (compared with the probability of co-appearance) are termed conjoint…

This article compares English and Russian studies of the use of psychometric methods in linguistic research, and presents the results of recent research. (CLK)

In a list presented for study, the successive occurrences of a repeated item may appear either in adjacent or nonadjacent list positions. This research attempts to determine the relative size of this spacing effect, either for massed-presentation items (MP) or distributed-presentation items (DP), in long-term tests of retention as compared to that…

Serial position curves for the immediate serial recall of supraspan word lists were investigated as a joint function of input modality and the frequency with which the list words occur in everyday usage. (Editor)

What processes underlie recognition memory? An explanation of word recognition should be compatible with a general explanation of the functioning of the memory system. The research discussed in this paper lends support to a model of recognition performance based on the marking and storage of lists of features or attributes that define a word's…

As an aid to language teaching and learning, this article posits rules that account for the realization of French final consonants in the majority of their occurrences. (Author/KM)

This article traces the history of several themes in applied linguistics and to show the relationships between linguistic theory and the sciences concerned with the learning and teaching of languages. Interest in word frequency statistics is discussed in particular. (Text is in Italian.) (CFM)

The study generated a list of the 1000 most frequently used words by teachers of hearing impaired children in six primary grade classes. Results have implications for real time captioning systems of communication. An alphabetical list and a list ordered by frequency of use are appended. (DB)

Argues that word frequency counts do not indicate frequency of words at all, that they ignore linguistic context, and that they take no account of the situation in which words are encountered. Argues that these defects are so serious that such counts should be used with caution, if at all. (SR)

Discusses the construction and testing of The Extended Basic Sight Vocabulary word list. Concludes that it provides educators with a unique instrument for the teaching and testing of words and for the preparation of instructional materials. Includes the word list. (FL)

Proposes split model for index term distribution in document set that uses rank function for high frequency terms and size function for low frequency terms; the point of transition is determined either empirically or by rule. Distributions to describe index term exhaustivity and term co-occurrence are considered briefly. (36 references) (EJS)

Notes that basal series commonly used in kindergarten through grade six teach only about half of the most common English words. Offers a list of 382 common words that do not appear in the books and suggests that teachers supplement their basals with their own word learning lessons. (FL)

Recognition memory has previously been shown to be better for unusual words than for common ones. Here it is seen that this word-frequency effect is reversed for extremely rare words. (Editor)