The present investigation is a study of the development of adjective definitions given by participants in Grades 6 and 10 and by young adults, as well as the influence of word frequency on those definitions. A total of 150 participants (50 per age group) wrote definitions for 6 high-frequency and 6 low-frequency adjectives. Adjective definitions…

What is the effect of a word's higher frequency neighbors on its identification time? According to activation-based models of word identification (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996; J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart, 1981), words with higher frequency neighbors will be processed more slowly than words without higher frequency neighbors because of…

Italian dyslexic children are characterized by a pervasive reading speed deficit, with relatively preserved accuracy. This pattern has been associated with predominant use of the nonlexical reading procedure. However, there is no evidence of a deficit in the lexical route of Italian dyslexics. We investigated both lexical and nonlexical reading…

This project describes a 12-week program developed to improve student spelling of high frequency words for transfer in written work across the curriculum. The targeted population consists of kindergarten, first, and third graders in two public elementary schools in a community located in central Illinois. Following an extensive literature review,…

Adult L2 learners are often encouraged to acquire new words through reading in order to promote language proficiency. Yet preparing suitable reading texts is often a challenge for teachers because the chosen texts must have a high percentage of words familiar to specific groups of learners in order to allow the inference of word meanings from…

To help reduce the guess work that underpins many phonics programs, a study comprehensively examined the phonic elements of 17,211 words drawn from the 17,310 word list originally compiled by Thorndike and Lorge and later updated by members of the Stanford Spelling Project. Each word in the list was assigned its corresponding respelling that was…

Examines the relationships between vocal activity and three other variables: attribution of quality contributions; perceived listening, and perceived understanding. Concludes that frequency and duration of speech serve as a major mediating variable in communicative relationships. (MH)

Reports on an analysis of seven tests in use for CSE Human Biology to determine the technical vocabulary to which pupils are exposed. Lists the frequency of occurrence of every term, outlines the scheme used for classifying terms, and presents a selected vocabulary of terms considered to be the most popular. (GS)

This paper discusses the procedures employed in compiling and coding a basic set of vocabulary words and related linguistic data intended for use in elementary communication skills instruction. Ten thousand words were selected from eight studies of words used by children at various grade levels, one through six. Each word was assigned a grade…

On the assumption that word frequency in written language as well as children's knowledge of words can provide the basis for a systematic contextual approach to reading vocabulary development, six current reading series and their workbooks (grades two through six) were analyzed for their presentation of prefixed words in context. Results of the…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS RESEARCH WAS TO EXAMINE THE EFFECTS OF SEVERAL MEASURES OF WORD-RELATEDNESS ON SEVERAL VERBAL LEARNING TASKS--PRIMARILY PAIRED-ASSOCIATES LEARNING AND VERBAL DISCRIMINATION LEARNING, WITH INCIDENTAL ATTENTION GIVEN TO FREE RECALL AND SEMANTIC GENERALIZATION. THE STRATEGY WAS TO SELECT A SAMPLE OF WORD PAIRS (240 COMMON NOUNS…

A collection of twenty-three lexical resources in information science, published in both the United States and Europe between 1960 and 1967, was analyzed with the purpose of tabulating the occurrence of different terms in them. This analysis, accomplished by means of a matrix generated on the IBM System 360 Model 40 computer, quantified the…

This paper reviews research and theoretical articles investigating psycholinguistic aspects of aphasia. The majo r parts of the review include: (1) the concept of regression in aphasic language both on an ontogenetic and a microgenetic level; (2) studies of specific parameters, such as abstractness; (3) the approach of mathematical linguistics;…

This study applied a frequency theory to measure the superiority of pictures over words in both discrimination learning and recognition memory tasks. Three groups of sixth grade students were given separate instructions before viewing slides of either common objects or words. The first group (control) was asked to study the items shown, the second…