Effects of Solution Word Attributes on Anagram Difficulty: A Regression Analysis

Abstract

A sample of 45 student subjects provided solution scores for 80 five-letter anagrams. These scores were analysed as a function of solution word imagery, concreteness, familiarity, objective frequency, age-of-acquisition and associative meaningfulness using multiple regression techniques. T w o bigram measures together with number of vowels, nature of starting letter (vowel or consonant), anagram pronounceability and anagram-solution similarity scores were also entered into the regression equations. The bigram measures, the starting letter and anagram-solution similarity emerged as having significant associations with the solution scores. Previous reports of imagery effects in anagram are discussed in the light of the present results.

The Syllable Effect in Anagram Solution: Unrecognised Evidence from Past Studies

“…Novick and Sherman (2008) describe it as "superficial" and something which is more likely to affect poor solvers. Yet the detrimental effect of pronounceability on anagram solution has been demonstrated on many occasions (Herbert & Rogers, 1966;Dominowski, 1966;Gilhooly & Johnson, 1978). It clearly suggests that Anagrams and Syllables phonemic encoding of anagrams takes place and is involved in some way in their solution, just as phonemic encoding plays a part in visual search, word recognition and reading processes (Conrad, 1964).…”

“…In that regard it is hoped that this paper will reinforce previous suggestions, which have been largely ignored (Fink & Weisberg;1981), that anagram research should be related to lexical access tasks and reading processes in general rather than being seen as simply a problem of letter rearrangement. Anagrams and Syllables Gilhooly and Johnson (1978) (N = 80 anagrams)______________________________________________ Variable B SEB β…”

“…The Gilhooly and Johnson (1978) anagram set contains one (56), two (20) and three (4) syllable words. In the reanalysis, one and two syllable words were compared first.…”

“…Many variables have been examined for their impact on the difficulty of anagram solution from word frequency, word concreteness, word imagery to bigram characteristics and anagram pronounceability (see Gilhooly and Johnson (1978) for a review). In this paper the results from six studies examining the variables which affect anagram solution difficulty will be reexamined.…”

Models of anagram solution

“…For example, it predicts that solution time is a posi· tively accelerating function of the number of letters given and that all anagrams of a given length are equally difficult. Both of these predictions have been disproved: Solution time is actually a negatively accelerating function of the number of letters given (Kaplan & Carvellas, 1968), and a variety of structural properties other than anagram length predict solution time (Gilhooly & Johnson, 1978;Mayzner & Tresselt, 1958;Mendelsohn, 1976;Tresselt & Mayzner, 1968). It is now generally accepted that anagram solution is carried out in accor· dance with the subject's knowledge of the statistical structure of the language.…”