Age-of-acquisition effects in semantic processing tasks

Brysbaert, Marc; Wijnendaele, Ilse Van; Deyne, Simon De

doi:10.1016/s0001-6918(00)00021-4

Cited by 224 publications

(230 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Consequently, our results contrast the findings of Morrison and Gibbons (2006), who reported reliable age of acquisition effects exclusively for items in the living domain. However, our findings are in line with studies reporting age of acquisition effects in semantic tasks such as category-member verification or object classification (Brysbaert et al, 2000;Ghyselinck, Custers et al, 2004;Holmes & Ellis, 2006;Johnston & Barry, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Judging the Animacy of Words: The Influence of Typicality and Age of Acquisition in a Semantic Decision Task

Räling

Hanne

Schröder

et al. 2017

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Judging the Animacy of Words: The Influence of Typicality and Age of Acquisition in a Semantic Decision Task

Räling

Hanne

Schröder

et al. 2017

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…In particular, when studying higher level cognitive processes or emotions the stimulus material may simply not allow for the generation of hundreds of trials or for presenting stimuli more than once (see e.g., Brysbaert, Van Wijnendaele, & De Deyne, 2000;Klauer et al, 2007). Often, however, there are many participants in the sample.…”

Section: A Hierarchical Framework For the Diffusion Model Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hierarchical diffusion models for two-choice response times.

Vandekerckhove

Tuerlinckx

Lee

2011

Psychological Methods

278

324

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Two-choice response times are a common type of data, and much research has been devoted to the development of process models for such data. However, the practical application of these models is notoriously complicated, and flexible methods are largely nonexistent. We combine a popular model for choice response times-the Wiener diffusion process-with techniques from psychometrics in order to construct a hierarchical diffusion model. Chief among these techniques is the application of random effects, with which we allow for unexplained variability among participants, items, or other experimental units. These techniques lead to a modeling framework that is highly flexible and easy to work with. Among the many novel models this statistical framework provides are a multilevel diffusion model, regression diffusion models, and a large family of explanatory diffusion models. We provide examples and the necessary computer code.Keywords: response time, psychometrics, hierarchical, random effects, diffusion model Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021765.suppIn his 1957 presidential address at the 65th annual business meeting of the American Psychological Association, Lee Cronbach drew a captivating sketch of the state of psychology at the time. He focused on the two distinct disciplines that then existed in the field of scientific psychology. On the one side, there was the experimental discipline, which concerned itself with the systematic manipulation of conditions in order to observe the consequences. On the other side, there was the correlational discipline, which focused on the study of preexisting differences between individuals or groups. Cronbach saw many potential contributions of these disciplines to one another and argued that the time and opportunity had come for the two dissociated fields to crossbreed: "We are free at last to look up from our own bedazzling treasure, to cast properly covetous glances upon the scientific wealth of our neighbor discipline. Trading has already been resumed, with benefit to both parties" (Cronbach, 1957, p. 675). Two decades onward, Cronbach (1975) saw the hybrid discipline flourishing across several domains.In the area of measurement of psychological processes, there exists a schism similar to the one Cronbach pointed out in his presidential address. Psychological measurement and individual differences are studied in the domain of psychometrics, whereas cognitive processes are the stuff of the more nomothetic mathematical psychology. In both areas, statistical models are used extensively. There are common models based on the (general) linear model, such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression, but we focus on more advanced, nonlinear techniques.Experimental psychology has, for a long time, made use of process models to describe interesting psychological phenomena in various fields. Some famous examples are Sternberg's (1966) sequential exhaustive search model for visual search and memory scanning, Atkinson and Shiffrin's (1968) multistore model for memory,...

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“…There have been numerous reports of the effects of word frequency and AoA on reading in transparent orthographies (frequency in Dutch, Brysbaert, Lange, & Van Wijnendaele, 2000;Brysbaert, Van Wijnendaele, & de Deyne, 2000;Ghyselinck, Lewis, & Brysbaert, 2004; frequency in Italian, Barca, Burani, & Arduino, 2002;Bates, Burani, D'Amico, & Barca, 2001;Burani, Arduino, & Barca, 2007;Paizi, Burani, & Zoccolotti, 2010; frequency in Persian, Baluch & Besner, 1991; AoA in Spanish, Cuetos & Barbón, 2006; frequency in Serbo-Croat, Frost et al, 1987; AoA in Turkish, Raman, 2006; and frequency in Turkish, Raman, Baluch, & Besner, 2004) in line with demonstrations seen in an opaque orthography such as English (Balota et al, 2004;Cortese & Khanna, 2007). However, there has been a vigorous debate over the interpretation of the AoA effect, especially over its relation to frequency and imageability effects, and over the locus (joint or separate) of the three effects (e.g., Brysbaert & Ghyselinck, 2006;J.…”

Section: Frequency and Aoa Effects In Reading In Spanish And Other Lamentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical and semantic age-of-acquisition effects on word naming in Spanish

2012

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We report a study of the factors that affect reading in Spanish, a language with a transparent orthography. Our focus was on the influence of lexical semantic knowledge in phonological coding. This effect would be predicted to be minimal in Spanish, according to some accounts of semantic effects in reading. We asked 25 healthy adults to name 2,764 mono-and multisyllabic words. As is typical for psycholinguistics, variables capturing critical word attributes were highly intercorrelated. Therefore, we used principal components analysis (PCA) to derive orthogonalized predictors from raw variables. The PCA distinguished components relating to (1) word frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and familiarity; (2) word AoA, imageability, and familiarity; (3) word length and orthographic neighborhood size; and (4) bigram type and token frequency. Linear mixed-effects analyses indicated significant effects on reading due to each PCA component. Our observations confirm that oral reading in Spanish proceeds through spelling-sound mappings involving lexical and sublexical units. Importantly, our observations distinguish between the effect of lexical frequency (the impact of the component relating to frequency, AoA, and familiarity) and the effect of semantic knowledge (the impact of the component relating to AoA, imageability, and familiarity). Semantic knowledge influences word naming even when all the words being read have regular spellingsound mappings.Keywords Spanish . Reading . Naming . Age of acquisition . Orthographic transparency . Curvilinear A general account of the cognitive reading system must describe and explain the effects of word attributes on reading in different orthographies. Orthographies may differ in a range of ways, but there has been a long-standing interest in how reading varies in relation to differences in orthographic transparency (e.g., Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987). The Spanish orthography is transparent because orthography-phonology mappings are completely rule governed across the language (Cuetos & Barbón, 2006). In comparison, the English orthography is quasi-regular, having both rule-governed and exceptional orthography-phonology mappings (Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996). Current evidence suggests that reading is affected by a mix of factors that appears to be similar in kind, whether more opaque or more transparent orthographies are examined. Our aim was to bring evidence to bear on whether reading effects would be similar, also, in the specific components. We were especially concerned with the impact on reading of the key lexical factors-frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and imageability (seen to affect reading in English; e.g., Balota, Cortese, Sergent-Marshall, Spieler, & Yap, 2004;Cortese & Khanna, 2007)-and with the question of whether previous observations of the AoA effect on reading in Spanish (Cuetos & Barbón, 2006) can be taken to reveal the influence of semantics on word naming in a transparent orthography. (Balota et al., 2004;Cortese & Khanna, 2007)...

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Age-of-acquisition effects in semantic processing tasks

Cited by 224 publications

References 30 publications

Judging the Animacy of Words: The Influence of Typicality and Age of Acquisition in a Semantic Decision Task

Judging the Animacy of Words: The Influence of Typicality and Age of Acquisition in a Semantic Decision Task

Hierarchical diffusion models for two-choice response times.

Lexical and semantic age-of-acquisition effects on word naming in Spanish

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