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Green C, Keogh K, Sun H, O'Brien B. The Children's Picture Books Lexicon (CPB-LEX): A large-scale lexical database from children's picture books. Behav Res Methods 2024; 56:4504-4521. [PMID: 37566336 PMCID: PMC11289352 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02198-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/10/2023] [Indexed: 08/12/2023]
Abstract
This article presents CPB-LEX, a large-scale database of lexical statistics derived from children's picture books (age range 0-8 years). Such a database is essential for research in psychology, education and computational modelling, where rich details on the vocabulary of early print exposure are required. CPB-LEX was built through an innovative method of computationally extracting lexical information from automatic speech-to-text captions and subtitle tracks generated from social media channels dedicated to reading picture books aloud. It consists of approximately 25,585 types (wordforms) and their frequency norms (raw and Zipf-transformed), a lexicon of bigrams (two-word sequences and their transitional probabilities) and a document-term matrix (which shows the importance of each word in the corpus in each book). Several immediate contributions of CPB-LEX to behavioural science research are reported, including that the new CPB-LEX frequency norms strongly predict age of acquisition and outperform comparable child-input lexical databases. The database allows researchers and practitioners to extract lexical statistics for high-frequency words which can be used to develop word lists. The paper concludes with an investigation of how CPB-LEX can be used to extend recent modelling research on the lexical diversity children receive from picture books in addition to child-directed speech. Our model shows that the vocabulary input from a relatively small number of picture books can dramatically enrich vocabulary exposure from child-directed speech and potentially assist children with vocabulary input deficits. The database is freely available from the Open Science Framework repository: https://tinyurl.com/4este73c .
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Affiliation(s)
- Clarence Green
- Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong
| | - Kathleen Keogh
- Senior Lecturer, Centre for Smart Analytics & Institute of Innovation, Science and Sustainability, Federation University Australia, Mount Helen, Australia.
| | - He Sun
- Centre for Research in Child Language, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Beth O'Brien
- Centre for Research in Child Development, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
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2
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Sá-Leite AR, Simpson IC, Fraga I, Comesaña M. A standardized approach to measuring gender transparency in languages. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2024; 246:104236. [PMID: 38613854 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104236] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/04/2023] [Revised: 03/11/2024] [Accepted: 03/21/2024] [Indexed: 04/15/2024] Open
Abstract
Languages can express grammatical gender through different ortho-phonological regularities present in nouns (e.g., the cues "-o" and "-a" for the masculine and the feminine respectively in Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish). The term "gender transparency" was coined to describe these regularities (Bates et al., 1995). In gendered languages, we can hence distinguish between transparent nouns, i.e., those displaying form regularities; opaque nouns, i.e., those with ambiguous endings; and irregular nouns, i.e., those that display the typical form regularities but are associated with the opposite gender. Following a descriptive analysis of such regularities, languages have been recently classified according to their degree of gender transparency, which seems relevant in regard to gender acquisition and processing. Yet, there are certain inconsistencies in determining which languages are overall transparent and which are opaque. In particular, it is not clear whether some other complex regularities such as derivational suffixes are also "transparent" cues for gender, what really constitutes an "opaque" noun, or which role orthography and morphology have in transparency. Given the existing inconsistencies in classifying languages as transparent or opaque, this work introduces a proposal to assess gender transparency systematically. Our methodology adapts the standardized factors proposed by Audring (2019) to analyse the relative complexity of gender systems. Such factors are adapted to gender transparency on the basis of the literature on gender acquisition and processing. To support the feasibility of such a proposal, the concepts have been instantiated in a quantitative model to obtain for the first time an objective measure of gender transparency using European Portuguese and Dutch as instances of target languages. Our results coincide with the theoretically expected outcome: European Portuguese obtains a high value of gender transparency while Dutch obtains a moderately low one. Future adaptations of this model to the gender systems of other languages could allow the continuum of gender transparency to sustain robust predictions in studies on gender processing and acquisition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Rita Sá-Leite
- Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany; Cognitive Processes & Behaviour Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology, and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
| | - Ian Craig Simpson
- Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - Isabel Fraga
- Cognitive Processes & Behaviour Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology, and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Montserrat Comesaña
- Psycholinguistics Research Line, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal
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Nag S, John S, Agrawal A. NSP-SCD: A corpus construction protocol for child-directed print in understudied languages. Behav Res Methods 2024; 56:2751-2764. [PMID: 38361097 PMCID: PMC11133114 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02339-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/09/2024] [Indexed: 02/17/2024]
Abstract
Child-directed print corpora enable systematic psycholinguistic investigations, but this research infrastructure is not available in many understudied languages. Moreover, researchers of understudied languages are dependent on manual tagging because precise automatized parsers are not yet available. One plausible way forward is to limit the intensive work to a small-sized corpus. However, with little systematic enquiry about approaches to corpus construction, it is unclear how robust a small corpus can be made. The current study examines the potential of a non-sequential sampling protocol for small corpus development (NSP-SCD) through a cross-corpora and within-corpus analysis. A corpus comprising 17,584 words was developed by applying the protocol to a larger corpus of 150,595 words from children's books for 3-to-10-year-olds. While the larger corpus will by definition have more instances of unique words and unique orthographic units, still, the selectively sampled small corpus approximated the larger corpus for lexical and orthographic diversity and was equivalent for orthographic representation and word length. Psycholinguistic complexity increased by book level and varied by parts of speech. Finally, in a robustness check of lexical diversity, the non-sequentially sampled small corpus was more efficient compared to a same-sized corpus constructed by simply using all sentences from a few books (402 books vs. seven books). If a small corpus must be used then non-sequential sampling from books stratified by book level makes the corpus statistics better approximate what is found in larger corpora. Overall, the protocol shows promise as a tool to advance the science of child language acquisition in understudied languages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sonali Nag
- Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
| | - Sunila John
- Department of Speech and Hearing, Manipal College of Health Professions, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India
| | - Aakash Agrawal
- NeuroSpin, CEA, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- The Promise Foundation, Bangalore, India
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4
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Korochkina M, Marelli M, Brysbaert M, Rastle K. The Children and Young People's Books Lexicon (CYP-LEX): A large-scale lexical database of books read by children and young people in the United Kingdom. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2024:17470218241229694. [PMID: 38262912 DOI: 10.1177/17470218241229694] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/25/2024]
Abstract
This article introduces the Children and Young People's Books-Lexicon (CYP-LEX), a large-scale lexical database derived from books popular with children and young people in the United Kingdom. CYP-LEX includes 1,200 books evenly distributed across three age bands (7-9, 10-12, 13+) and comprises over 70 million tokens and over 105,000 types. For each word in each age band, we provide its raw and Zipf-transformed frequencies, all parts-of-speech in which it occurs with raw frequency and lemma for each occurrence, and measures of count-based contextual diversity. Together and individually, the three CYP-LEX age bands contain substantially more words than any other publicly available database of books for primary and secondary school children. Most of these words are very low in frequency, and a substantial proportion of the words in each age band do not occur on British television. Although the three age bands share some very frequent words, they differ substantially regarding words that occur less frequently, and this pattern also holds at the level of individual books. Initial analyses of CYP-LEX illustrate why independent reading constitutes a challenge for children and young people, and they also underscore the importance of reading widely for the development of reading expertise. Overall, CYP-LEX provides unprecedented information into the nature of vocabulary in books that British children aged 7+ read, and is a highly valuable resource for those studying reading and language development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Korochkina
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
| | - Marco Marelli
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Marc Brysbaert
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Kathleen Rastle
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
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Li L, Zhao W, Song M, Wang J, Cai Q. CCLOOW: Chinese children's lexicon of oral words. Behav Res Methods 2024; 56:846-859. [PMID: 36881355 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02077-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/16/2023] [Indexed: 03/08/2023]
Abstract
In this article, we introduce the Chinese Children's Lexicon of Oral Words (CCLOOW), the first lexical database based on animated movies and TV series for 3-to-9-year-old Chinese children. The database computes from 2.7 million character tokens and 1.8 million word tokens. It contains 3920 unique character and 22,229 word types. CCLOOW reports frequency and contextual diversity metrics of the characters and words, as well as length and syntactic categories of the words. CCLOOW frequency and contextual diversity measures correlated well with other Chinese lexical databases, particularly well with that computed from children's books. The predictive validity of CCLOOW measures were confirmed with Grade 2 children's naming and lexical decision experiments. Further, we found that CCLOOW frequencies could explain a considerable proportion in adults' written word recognition, indicating that early language experience might have lasting impacts on the mature lexicon. CCLOOW provides validated frequency and contextual diversity estimates that complements current children's lexical database based on written language samples. It is freely accessible online at https://www.learn2read.cn/ccloow .
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Affiliation(s)
- Luan Li
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai, 200062, China
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
- Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology, Shanghai, China
| | - Wentao Zhao
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai, 200062, China
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
- Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology, Shanghai, China
| | - Ming Song
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai, 200062, China
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
- Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology, Shanghai, China
| | - Jing Wang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai, 200062, China.
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China.
- Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology, Shanghai, China.
| | - Qing Cai
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai, 200062, China.
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China.
- Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology, Shanghai, China.
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Zhang M, Liu Z, Botezatu MR, Dang Q, Yuan Q, Han J, Liu L, Guo T. A large-scale database of Chinese characters and words collected from elementary school textbooks. Behav Res Methods 2023:10.3758/s13428-023-02214-1. [PMID: 37620745 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02214-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/30/2023] [Indexed: 08/26/2023]
Abstract
Lexical databases are essential tools for studies on language processing and acquisition. Most previous Chinese lexical databases have focused on materials for adults, yet little is known about reading materials for children and how lexical properties from these materials affect children's reading comprehension. In the present study, we provided the first large database of 2999 Chinese characters and 2182 words collected from the official textbooks recently issued by the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the People's Republic of China for most elementary schools in Mainland China, as well as norms from both school-aged children and adults. The database incorporates key orthographic, phonological, and semantic factors from these lexical units. A word-naming task was used to investigate the effects of these factors in character and word processing in both adults and children. The results suggest that: (1) as the grade level increases, visual complexity of those characters and words increases whereas semantic richness and frequency decreases; (2) the effects of lexical predictors on processing both characters and words vary across children and adults; (3) the effect of age of acquisition shows different patterns on character and word-naming performance. The database is available on Open Science Framework (OSF) ( https://osf.io/ynk8c/?view_only=5186bd68549340bd923e9b6531d2c820 ) for future studies on Chinese language development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Man Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Zeping Liu
- Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
| | - Mona Roxana Botezatu
- Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
| | - Qinpu Dang
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Qiming Yuan
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Jinzhuo Han
- Chinese Language and Culture College, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Li Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Taomei Guo
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
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7
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CCLOWW: A grade-level Chinese children's lexicon of written words. Behav Res Methods 2022:10.3758/s13428-022-01890-9. [PMID: 35776384 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01890-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In this article, we present the Chinese Children's Lexicon of Written Words (CCLOWW), the first grade-level database that provides frequency statistics of simplified Chinese characters and words for children. The database computes from a corpus of 34,671,424 character tokens and 22,427,010 word tokens (including single- and multicharacter words), extracted from 2131 books. It contains 6746 different character types and 153,079 different word types. CCLOWW provides several frequency indices of simplified Chinese for three grade levels (grade 2 and below, grades 3-4, grades 5-6) to profile children's experience with written Chinese in and outside of school. We describe in this article the distributions of frequency and contextual diversity of the characters and words, as well as word length and syntactic categories of the words in the corpus and the subcorpora. We also report results of correlation analyses with other written corpora and of several naming and lexicon decision experiments. The findings suggest that CCLOWW frequency measures correlate well with other corpora. Importantly, they could reliably predict children's and adults' naming and lexical decision performances. They could also explain variance in adults' visual word recognition, in addition to frequency measures computed in an adult corpus, indicating that early print exposure might influence readers' lexical processing later on beyond an age of acquisition effect. CCLOWW will help researchers in language processing and development as well as educators with selecting language materials appropriate for children's developmental stages. The database is freely available online at https://www.learn2read.cn/database/ .
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Campos AD, Oliveira HM, Soares AP. Syllable effects in beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese readers: Evidence from a sandwich masked go/no-go lexical decision task. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2021; 48:699-716. [PMID: 32958084 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000920000537] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Reading is one of the most important milestones a child achieves throughout development. Above the letter level, the syllable has been shown to play a relevant role at early stages of visual word recognition in adult skilled readers. However, studies aiming to examine when, during reading acquisition, the syllable emerges as a functional sublexical unit are scarce, and the studies conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. In this work, beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese (EP) developing readers performed a sandwich masked lexical decision task in which CV (e.g., RU.MOR[rumour]) and CVC (e.g., CIS.NE[swan]) first-syllable EP words were preceded either by syllable congruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, cis.ra-CIS.NE), syllable incongruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, ci.ser-CIS.NE), unrelated (e.g., va.cra-RU.MOR, zar.vo-CIS.NE) pseudowords primes, or identity (e.g., ru.mour-RU.MOUR, cis.ne-CIS.NE) primes. Results showed reliable syllable effects only for intermediate readers and for CV and CVC words alike. Findings are discussed attending to current models of visual word recognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Duarte Campos
- Research Unit in Psycholinguistics, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Minho University, Braga, Portugal
| | - Helena Mendes Oliveira
- Research Unit in Psycholinguistics, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Minho University, Braga, Portugal
| | - Ana Paula Soares
- Research Unit in Psycholinguistics, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Minho University, Braga, Portugal
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9
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LAB: Linguistic Annotated Bibliography - a searchable portal for normed database information. Behav Res Methods 2019; 51:1878-1888. [PMID: 30284211 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-018-1130-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
This article presents the Linguistic Annotated Bibliography (LAB) as a searchable Web portal to quickly and easily access reliable database norms, related programs, and variable calculations. These publications were coded by language, number of stimuli, stimuli type (i.e., words, pictures, symbols), keywords (i.e., frequency, semantics, valence), and other useful information. This tool not only allows researchers to search for the specific type of stimuli needed for experiments but also permits the exploration of publication trends across 100 years of research. Details about the portal creation and use are outlined, as well as various analyses of change in publication rates and keywords. In general, advances in computational power have allowed for the increase in dataset size in the recent decades, in addition to an increase in the number of linguistic variables provided in each publication.
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Soares AP, Lages A, Oliveira H, Hernández J. The mirror reflects more for d than for b: Right asymmetry bias on the visual recognition of words containing reversal letters. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 182:18-37. [PMID: 30782560 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.01.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2018] [Revised: 01/11/2019] [Accepted: 01/11/2019] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
Research has shown that recognizing words that contain reversal letters (e.g., b/d) is more difficult than recognizing words that do not contain them. Although none of the current computational models of visual word recognition can account for this effect, it was recently suggested that it may arise from lateral inhibition connections that, at the letter level of processing, can be established between reversal nodes. However, because in writing left-faced letters (e.g., d) are more prone to be reversed into right-faced letters (e.g., b) than the inverse, we hypothesized that the directionality of the reversal letters could modulate the magnitude of the mirror-letter interference effect. In this study, we directly tested this hypothesis by using a highly controlled set of European Portuguese (EP) words containing only either the mirror-letter b or the mirror-letter d in three lexical decision (go/no-go) masked priming experiments conducted with EP adult skilled readers (Experiment 1) and two groups of EP developing readers (third-grade children [Experiment 2] and fifth-grade children [Experiment 3]). Results showed that reliable mirror-letter interference effects were observed only for d-words in both adult skilled readers and fifth-grade children, which asks for additional amendments in the current computational models of visual word recognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Paula Soares
- Human Cognition Lab, Center for Research in Psychology (CIPsi), School of Psychology, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal.
| | - Alexandrina Lages
- Human Cognition Lab, Center for Research in Psychology (CIPsi), School of Psychology, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal
| | - Helena Oliveira
- Human Cognition Lab, Center for Research in Psychology (CIPsi), School of Psychology, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal
| | - Juan Hernández
- Department of Psychobiology and Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, University of La Laguna, 38200 San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
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11
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Portuguese Norms of Name Agreement, Concept Familiarity, Subjective Frequency and Visual Complexity for 150 Colored and Tridimensional Pictures. SPANISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 2018; 21:E8. [PMID: 29633684 DOI: 10.1017/sjp.2018.10] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
Pictures are complex stimuli that require a careful control of several characteristics and attributes standardized for different languages. In this work we present for the first time European Portuguese (EP) norms for name agreement, concept familiarity, subjective frequency and visual complexity for a new set of 150 colored pictures. These pictures were selected to represent exemplars of the most used semantic categories in research and to depict objects which, though familiar to the participants, were rarely used in daily life, which makes them particularly prone to speech failures such as tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. Norms were collected from 640 EP native speakers that rated each picture in the four variables through a web-survey procedure. Results showed, as expected, that a large number of pictures in the dataset elicited a TOT response, and additionally that the ratings obtained in each of the dimensions are in line with those observed in other pictorial datasets. Norms can be freely downloaded at https://www.psi.uminho.pt/en/Research/Psycholinguistics/Pages/Databases.aspx.
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The Minho Word Pool: Norms for imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 Portuguese words. Behav Res Methods 2018; 49:1065-1081. [PMID: 27388620 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-016-0767-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Words are widely used as stimuli in cognitive research. Because of their complexity, using words requires strict control of their objective (lexical and sublexical) and subjective properties. In this work, we present the Minho Word Pool (MWP), a dataset that provides normative values of imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 (European) Portuguese words-three subjective measures that, in spite of being used extensively in research, have been scarce for Portuguese. Data were collected with 2,357 college students who were native speakers of European Portuguese. The participants rated 100 words drawn randomly from the full set for each of the three subjective indices, using a Web survey procedure (via a URL link). Analyses comparing the MWP ratings with those obtained for the same words from other national and international databases showed that the MWP norms are reliable and valid, thus providing researchers with a useful tool to support research in all neuroscientific areas using verbal stimuli. The MWP norms can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases .
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Terzopoulos AR, Duncan LG, Wilson MAJ, Niolaki GZ, Masterson J. HelexKids: A word frequency database for Greek and Cypriot primary school children. Behav Res Methods 2017; 49:83-96. [PMID: 26822666 PMCID: PMC5352803 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-015-0698-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In this article, we introduce HelexKids, an online written-word database for Greek-speaking children in primary education (Grades 1 to 6). The database is organized on a grade-by-grade basis, and on a cumulative basis by combining Grade 1 with Grades 2 to 6. It provides values for Zipf, frequency per million, dispersion, estimated word frequency per million, standard word frequency, contextual diversity, orthographic Levenshtein distance, and lemma frequency. These values are derived from 116 textbooks used in primary education in Greece and Cyprus, producing a total of 68,692 different word types. HelexKids was developed to assist researchers in studying language development, educators in selecting age-appropriate items for teaching, as well as writers and authors of educational books for Greek/Cypriot children. The database is open access and can be searched online at www.helexkids.org .
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Affiliation(s)
- Aris R Terzopoulos
- Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Dundee, Nethergate, DD1 4HN, Dundee, UK.
| | - Lynne G Duncan
- Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Dundee, Nethergate, DD1 4HN, Dundee, UK
| | | | - Georgia Z Niolaki
- School of Psychology, Behavioral and Social Sciences, Coventry University, Coventry, UK
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
| | - Jackie Masterson
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
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Schroeder S, Würzner KM, Heister J, Geyken A, Kliegl R. childLex–Eine lexikalische Datenbank zur Schriftsprache für Kinder im Deutschen. PSYCHOLOGISCHE RUNDSCHAU 2015. [DOI: 10.1026/0033-3042/a000275] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Zusammenfassung. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir childLex vor, eine online-Datenbank zur Schriftsprache für Kinder im Deutschen. childLex basiert auf einem Korpus aus Kinder- und Schulbüchern, das ca. 10 Millionen Wörter umfasst, und stellt verschiedene linguistische Normen auf der lexikalischen, superlexikalischen und sublexikalischen Ebene zur Verfügung. Diese werden in der psychologischen Forschung dringend zur Erstellung von altersadäquaten Stimulus- und Trainingsmaterialien benötigt. Separate Normen sind für drei verschiedene Altersbereiche verfügbar: 6 – 8 Jahre (1. – 2. Klasse), 9 – 10 Jahre (3. – 4. Klasse) und 11 – 12 Jahre (5. – 6. Klasse). Hier beschreiben wir Aufbau und Analyse von childLex und vergleichen Frequenznormen auf der lexikalischen, superlexikalischen und sublexikalischen Ebene mit denen des DWDS-Kernkorpus, eines umfassenden Korpus zur Schriftsprache für Erwachsene. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die beiden Korpora im hochfrequenten Bereich und auf der sublexikalischen Ebene gut übereinstimmen, während sie auf der lexikalischen und superlexikalischen Ebene sowie im mittel- bis niederfrequenten Bereich stark voneinander abweichen. Abschließend erläutern wir, welche Variablen in childLex verfügbar sind und wie sie sich abfragen lassen.
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Soares AP, Machado J, Costa A, Iriarte Á, Simões A, de Almeida JJ, Comesaña M, Perea M. On the advantages of word frequency and contextual diversity measures extracted from subtitles: The case of Portuguese. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2014; 68:680-96. [PMID: 25263599 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2014.964271] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
We examined the potential advantage of the lexical databases using subtitles and present SUBTLEX-PT, a new lexical database for 132,710 Portuguese words obtained from a 78 million corpus based on film and television series subtitles, offering word frequency and contextual diversity measures. Additionally we validated SUBTLEX-PT with a lexical decision study involving 1920 Portuguese words (and 1920 nonwords) with different lengths in letters (M = 6.89, SD = 2.10) and syllables (M = 2.99, SD = 0.94). Multiple regression analyses on latency and accuracy data were conducted to compare the proportion of variance explained by the Portuguese subtitle word frequency measures with that accounted by the recent written-word frequency database (Procura-PALavras; P-PAL; Soares, Iriarte, et al., 2014 ). As its international counterparts, SUBTLEX-PT explains approximately 15% more of the variance in the lexical decision performance of young adults than the P-PAL database. Moreover, in line with recent studies, contextual diversity accounted for approximately 2% more of the variance in participants' reading performance than the raw frequency counts obtained from subtitles. SUBTLEX-PT is freely available for research purposes (at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases ).
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Paula Soares
- a Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology , University of Minho , Minho , Portugal
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Soares AP, Perea M, Comesaña M. Tracking the emergence of the consonant bias in visual-word recognition: evidence with developing readers. PLoS One 2014; 9:e88580. [PMID: 24523917 PMCID: PMC3921185 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088580] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2013] [Accepted: 01/07/2014] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent research with skilled adult readers has consistently revealed an advantage of consonants over vowels in visual-word recognition (i.e., the so-called "consonant bias"). Nevertheless, little is known about how early in development the consonant bias emerges. This work aims to address this issue by studying the relative contribution of consonants and vowels at the early stages of visual-word recognition in developing readers (2(nd) and 4(th) Grade children) and skilled adult readers (college students) using a masked priming lexical decision task. Target words starting either with a consonant or a vowel were preceded by a briefly presented masked prime (50 ms) that could be the same as the target (e.g., pirata-PIRATA [pirate-PIRATE]), a consonant-preserving prime (e.g., pureto-PIRATA), a vowel-preserving prime (e.g., gicala-PIRATA), or an unrelated prime (e.g., bocelo -PIRATA). Results revealed significant priming effects for the identity and consonant-preserving conditions in adult readers and 4(th) Grade children, whereas 2(nd) graders only showed priming for the identity condition. In adult readers, the advantage of consonants was observed both for words starting with a consonant or a vowel, while in 4(th) graders this advantage was restricted to words with an initial consonant. Thus, the present findings suggest that a Consonant/Vowel skeleton should be included in future (developmental) models of visual-word recognition and reading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Paula Soares
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - Manuel Perea
- ERI-Lectura and Departamento de Metodología, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain
- Basque Center on Brain, Language, and Cognition, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain
| | - Montserrat Comesaña
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal
- Cognitive Processes and Behaviour Research Group, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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Free associate norms for 139 European Portuguese words for children from different age groups. Behav Res Methods 2013; 46:564-74. [PMID: 24048979 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-013-0388-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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