An examination of word frequency and neighborhood density in the development of spoken-word recognition

Abstract

In this study, the effects of word-frequency and phonological similarity relations in the development of spoken-word recognition were examined. Seven-, 9-, and l l-year-olds and adults listened to increasingly longer segments of high-and low-frequency monosyllabic words with many or few word neighbors that sounded similar (neighborhood density). Older children and adults required less of the acoustic-phonetic information to recognize words with few neighbors and low-frequency words than did younger children. Adults recognized high-frequency words with few neighbors on the basis of less input than did all three of the children's groups. All subjects showed a higher proportion of different-word guesses for words with many versus few neighbors. A frequency X neighborhood density interaction revealed that recognition is facilitated for high-frequency words with few versus many neighbors; the opposite was found for low-frequency words. Results are placed within a developmental framework on the emergence of the phoneme as a unit in perceptual processing.

Phonological development in relation to native language and literacy: Variations on a theme in six alphabetic orthographies

“…Vocabulary-driven restructuring, as described in the LR model, is supported by developmental evidence that low frequency words are more likely to be represented in greater phonological detail if they are from dense than sparse phonological neighbourhoods (Metsala, 1997(Metsala, , 1999. Nevertheless, the observation that this frequency by neighbourhood density interaction is displayed to the same extent by literate and illiterate adult populations in gating and identification in noise tasks (Ventura, Kolinsky, Fernandes, Querido, & Morais, 2007a), raises issues about the relationship between restructuring and vocabulary growth since vocabulary tends to be smaller in illiterate than literate groups (Morais & Kolinsky, 2002).…”

Auditory word identification in dyslexic and normally achieving readers

“…The results were interpreted in terms of the lexical restructuring hypothesis (Metsala, 1997a;Metsala & Walley, 1997). According to this view, phonological representations of young children initially are holistic but become more segmentally organized due to the pressure of vocabulary expansion.…”

“…Adults require as little as 150 ms of the word (less than half the length of a typical spoken word) to identify highly familiar words (Grosjean, 1980;Salasoo & Pisoni, 1985;Tyler & Wessels, 1985). Children require more acoustic information than do adults (Metsala, 1997a).…”

“…Relatively few studies have used the gating paradigm with children (Boada & Pennington, 2006;Dollaghan, 1998;Edwards et al, 1999;Elliot, Hammer, & Evan, 1987;Elliot, Scholl, Grant, & Hammer, 1990;Griffiths & Snowling, 2001;Metsala, 1997aMetsala, , 1997bMontgomery, 1999;Walley, 1988;Walley, Michela, & Wood, 1995;Wesseling & Reitsma, 2001). Performance is scored in terms of initial consonant or whole word matching.…”

“…In general, the findings are that children require more gates (a longer piece of the word) for identification than do adults. For example, Metsala (1997a) assessed gating performance in 7-, 9-, and 11-yearolds as well as in adults. The 7-year-olds required significantly more gates (i.e., more acoustic input) to identify target words, as well as initial phonemes of the target words, when compared with 11-year-olds and adults.…”