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Semantic Diversity, Frequency and the Development of Lexical Quality in Children’s Word Reading ...
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Abstract:
Frequency exerts a powerful influence on lexical processing but it is possible that at least part of its effect is caused by high frequency words being experienced in more diverse contexts over an individual’s language experience. To capture this variability, we applied Latent Semantic Analysis on a 35-million-word corpus of texts written for children, deriving a measure of semantic diversity that quantifies the similarity of all the contexts a word appears in. Across three experiments with 6-13-year-old children involving reading aloud and lexical decision, we found a main effect of semantic diversity: high diversity words were responded to faster and more accurately than low diversity words. Frequency and document count were also significant predictors of reading behavior, and reading proficiency modulated the item-level effects. These findings demonstrate that contextual variability contributes to word learning and the development of lexical quality, beyond the effect of frequency. ...
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Keyword:
Cognitive Psychology; Developmental Psychology; FOS Languages and literature; FOS Psychology; Linguistics; Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics; Psychology; Social and Behavioral Sciences
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URL: https://psyarxiv.com/p9xk4/
https://dx.doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/p9xk4
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