The word frequency effect during sentence reading: A linear or nonlinear effect of log frequency?

Abstract

The effect of word frequency on eye movement behaviour during reading has been reported in many experimental studies. However, the vast majority of these studies compared only two levels of word frequency (high and low). Here we assess whether the effect of log word frequency on eye movement measures is linear, in an experiment in which a critical target word in each sentence was at one of three approximately equally spaced log frequency levels. Separate analyses treated log frequency as a categorical or a continuous predictor. Both analyses showed only a linear effect of log frequency on the likelihood of skipping a word, and on first fixation duration. Ex-Gaussian analyses of first fixation duration showed similar effects on distributional parameters in comparing high-and medium-frequency words, and medium-and low-frequency words. Analyses of gaze duration and the probability of a refixation suggested a nonlinear pattern, with a larger effect at the lower end of the log frequency scale. However, the nonlinear effects were small, and Bayes Factor analyses favoured the simpler linear models for all measures. The possible roles of lexical and post-lexical factors in producing nonlinear effects of log word frequency during sentence reading are discussed.

The role of word frequency and contextual diversity in visual word recognition: a mini review

“…Previous studies have shown that word frequency effects appear in the memory of the mirror effect [52], that is, classes of stimuli that are accurately recognized as old when old are also accurately recognized as new when new; those that are poorly recognized as old when old are also poorly recognized as new when new. This phenomenon occurs in patients with Alzheimer's dementia [53,54], Korakov amnesia [55], midazolam amnesia [56] and other cognitive impairment in patients are widespread. In addition, the identification of word frequency effects in patients with schizophrenic patients such as schizophrenic patients is found to be more difficult to identify high frequency words than in low frequency words, possibly because high frequency words may be stored in long-term memory [57].…”

“…This contradictory result suggests that the mechanism of contextual diversity is still unclear, and existing research cannot provide clear and strong scientific evidence. First, the Vergara-Martínez et al [26] did not control the lexical semantic diversity, making the driving mechanism of the contextual diversity effect unclear; secondly, although the EEG technique had a very high temporal sensitivity, Vergara-Martínez et al did not control the materials (words high-CD high WF and words with low CD high WF word are marginal significant in the frequency of words, p = 0.07, Figure. 1), so that it cannot be concluded that the observed effects of contextual diversity have no interference from word frequency. Given the contradictory results: (1) Contextual diversity rather than word frequency is a better predictor of word recognition [1,[41][42][43].…”

“…However, Vergara-Martínez et al, [26] found, when using ERPs to detect the role of contextual diversity, it is not an incidental phenomenon of word frequency, and both cannot be substituted for visual word recognition in reading. This contradictory result suggests that the mechanism of contextual diversity is still unclear, and existing research cannot provide clear and strong scientific evidence.…”

“…Given the contradictory results: (1) Contextual diversity rather than word frequency is a better predictor of word recognition [1,[41][42][43]. (2) both of them could influence word recognition independently, and they are two total different variables [26,44], thus need more research and discussion to confirm the relationship of the two.…”

“…Brysbaert and New B [22] then gave an operational definition, it refers to the number of movies or dramas that a word appears in a subtitle corpus, and further research almost use subtitles as source of corpus, and it has been proved to explain significantly more of the variance in word naming and lexical decision performance than the measures based on written texts [23][24][25][26].…”