This paper describes a Hebrew naming test that consists of 48 line drawings ordered by word frequency. The initial validation phase included 48 young adults (ages 20-28), 48 old adults (ages 67-85), and 27 individuals with Alzheimer's disease (ages 68-87). Results indicated a modest odd-even internal consistency effect, word frequency effect, and…

Whereas some research on immediate recall of verbal lists has suggested that it is limited by the number of chunks that can be recalled (e.g., N. Cowan, Z. Chen, & J. N. Rouder, 2004; E. Tulving & J. E. Patkau, 1962), other research has suggested that it is limited by the length of the material to be recalled (e.g., A. D. Baddeley, N. Thomson, &…

Bilingual reading can require more than knowing two languages. Learners must acquire also the writing conventions of their second language, which can differ in its deep mapping principles (writing system) and its visual configurations (script). We review ERP (event-related potential) and fMRI studies of both Chinese-English bilingualism and…

Analyzing word frequency in six complete texts, a study investigated how vocabulary can be used to define texts. The texts included three stories from 5th and 6th grade readers, selections from literature anthologies for 8th grade and 12th grade students, and a magazine essay for adults. Results indicated that if particular words occur frequently…

A study investigated the exophoric function of the pronouns "it, they, he, she" and related forms in four English conversations. It analyzed the frequency and characteristics of the occurrence of those exophoric pronouns and found that they were much less frequent than endophoric pronouns. It also found that the exophoric pronoun groups…

While interest in second language vocabulary knowledge has increased, vocabulary testing remains largely confined to the quantitative measurement of discrete items. More qualitative measures are needed to assess how well particular words are known. Research has characterized word knowledge in two ways: as a set of components or aspects, and as an…

To determine if measures of the frequency of English root words can serve as reliable predictors of knowledge of those words, a 98-item multiple choice vocabulary test, in which all of the items were English root words, was administered to 46 third graders and 45 fourth graders. The percentage of correct responses for the words was correlated with…

An alternative to the standard "rule based" account of a child's acquisition of the past tense in English is presented in this paper. While the rule based assumption suggests that children typically pass through a three-phase acquisition process in which they first learn past tense by rote, then learn the past tense rule and overregularize, and…

Compilation of a list of the most common phrases used in reading was begun with the rationale that the quick recognition of phrases would facilitate reading comprehension. These first efforts showed that categorizing phrases by parts of speech did not provide acceptable levels of accuracy. The system that was effective, however, used a computer…

To determine the number of distinct words in printed school English, a study analyzed a 7,260 word sample from the "Word Frequency Book" prepared by J. B. Carroll, P. Davies, and B. Richman. Projecting from the sample to the total vocabulary of school English, the best estimate was that it contained about 88,500 distinct words. Furthermore, for…

A major purpose of this study was to determine whether a selected number of current, commercially prepared spelling series used high frequency words for their word lists. A second purpose was to determine whether students misspelled high frequency words in their writing. Eleven commercially prepared spelling series were selected according to the…

A study was conducted to determine the effects of sentence length, sentence structure, and word frequency on the readability of textbook prose. Specifically, the study assessed the extent to which the factors, taken alone or in combination, affected the readability of two 1,000-word college textbook passages when the content remained the same. Two…

A review of the literature and an examination of the state of the technology is presented in this discussion of text analysis with computers. The computer capabilities of several available text analysis programs are reviewed, including those that examine vocabulary, word strings, sentence and syntactic complexity, and readability. (AEA)

This word frequency list was extracted from a corpus of fifty half-hour conversations recorded in Paris during the academic year 1967-68. The speakers, who did not know that they were being recorded, were all well-educated professionals and all speakers of the most standard dialect of French. The list is made up of all phonetically discrete words…