Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:43:34.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Clusters of word properties as predictors of elementary school children's performance on two word tasks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2011

AGNES TELLINGS*
Affiliation:
Radboud University
KARIEN COPPENS
Affiliation:
Radboud University
JOHN GELISSEN
Affiliation:
Tilburg University
ROB SCHREUDER
Affiliation:
Radboud University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Agnes Tellings, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Montessorilaan 3, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Often, the classification of words does not go beyond “difficult” (i.e., infrequent, late-learned, nonimageable, etc.) or “easy” (i.e., frequent, early-learned, imageable, etc.) words. In the present study, we used a latent cluster analysis to divide 703 Dutch words with scores for eight word properties into seven clusters of words. Each cluster represents a group of words that share a particular configuration of word properties. This model was empirically validated with three data sets from Grades 2 to 4 children who made either a lexical decision task or a use decision task with a selection of the words. Significant differences were found between the clusters of words within the three data sets. Implications for further study and for practice are discussed.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aarnoutse, C., & Van Leeuwe, J. (2000). Development of poor and better readers during elementary school. Educational Research and Evaluation, 6, 251278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Feldman, L. B., & Schreuder, R. (2006). Morphological influences on the recognition of monosyllabic monomorphemic words. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 290313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & Gulikers, L. (1995). The CELEX Lexical Database (Technical report). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, Linguistic Data Consortium.Google Scholar
Bird, H., Franklin, S., & Howard, D. (2001). Age of acquisition and imageability ratings for a large set of words, including verbs and function words. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 33, 7379.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bozdogan, H. (1987). Model selection and Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC): The general theory and its analytical extensions. Psychometrica, 52, 345370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brysbaert, M. (1996). Word frequency affects naming latency in Dutch when age of acquisition is controlled. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 8, 185193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burani, C., Marcolini, S., de Luca, M., & Zoccolotti, P. (2008). Morpheme-based reading aloud: Evidence from dyslexic and skilled Italian readers. Cognition, 108, 243262.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlisle, J. F., & Katz, L. A. (2006). Effects of word and morpheme familiarity on reading of derived words. Reading and Writing, 19, 669693.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catling, J. C., & Johnston, R. A. (2005). Age of acquisition effects on word generation. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17, 161177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. (2003). First language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coppen, P. A. (1994). A new version of the Amazon/Casus system. In De Haan, P. & Oostdijk, N. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Department of Language and Speech (Vol. 18, pp. 8590). Nijmegen: Radboud University.Google Scholar
Coppens, K., Tellings, A., Verhoeven, L., & Schreuder, R. (2011). Depth of reading vocabulary in hearing and hearing-impaired children. Reading and Writing, 24, 463477.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cortese, M. J., & Fugett, A. (2004). Imageability ratings for 3000 monosyllabic words. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 36, 384387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Jong, N. H., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (2000). The morphological family size effect and morphology. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15, 329365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eldredge, J. L. (1990). Causal relationships between phonics, reading comprehension, and vocabulary achievement in the second grade. Journal of Educational Research. 8, 201214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerhand, S., & Barry, C. (1998). Word frequency effects in oral reading are not merely age of acquisition effects in disguise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 267283.Google Scholar
Ghyselinck, M., De Moor, W., & Brysbaert, M. (2000). Age of acquisition ratings for 2816 Dutch four- and five-letter nouns. Psychologica Belgica, 40, 7798.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L., Cassidy, K., Nappa, R., Papafragou, A., & Trueswell, J. (2005). Hard words. Language Learning and Development, 1, 2364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harley, T. A. (2001). The psychology of language: From data to theory (2nd ed.). Oxford: Taylor & Francis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kavé, G., & Levy, Y. (2005). The processing of morphology in old age. Evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48, 14421451.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, M. B. (2006). Chasing psycholinguistic effects: A cautionary tale. Visual Cognition, 13, 10121026.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, M. B., & Vladeanu, M. (2006). What do we know about psycholinguistic effects? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 977986.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacCallum, R. C., Roznowski, M., Mar, M., & Reith, J. V. (1994). Alternative strategies for cross-validation of covariance structure models. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 29, 132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Magnini, B., Strapparava, C., Pezzuolo, G., & Gliozzo, A. (2002). The role of domain information in Word Sense Disambiguation. Natural Language Engineering, 8, 359373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, F. M. D., Bertram, R., Haikio, T., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (2004). Morphological family size in a morphologically rich language: The case of Finnish compared with Dutch and Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 30, 12711278.Google Scholar
Martin, F. M. D., Deutsch, A., Frost, R., Schreuder, R., De Jong, N. H., & Baayen, R. H. (2005). Changing places: A cross-language perspective on frequency and family size in Dutch and Hebrew. Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 496512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perea, M., Rosa, E., & Gomez, C. (2002). Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task? Memory & Cognition, 30, 3445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raftery, A. E. (1999), Bayes factors and BIC: Comment on “A critique of the Bayesian information criterion for model selection.” Sociological Methods and Research, 27, 411427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reilly, J., & Kean, J. (2007). Formal distinctiveness of high- and low-imageability nouns: Analyses and theoretical implications. Cognitive Science, 31, 157168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (1997). How complex simplex words can be. Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 118139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shiotsu, T., & Weir, C. J. (2007). The relative significance of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary breadth in the prediction of reading comprehension test performance. Language Testing, 24, 99128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suprenant, A. M., & Hura, S. L. (1999). Familiarity and pronounceability of nouns and names. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 31, 638649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tellings, A., & Bouts, L. (2011). Dutch elementary school children's attribution of meaning to written pseudowords. Reading and Writing, 24, 801812.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Varela Mallou, J., Rial Boubeta, A., Braña Tobío, T., & Voces López, C. (2008). Application of latent class analysis to the investigation of customer loyalty in service companies. Methodology, 4, 8796.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vermunt, J. K., & Magidson, J. (2000). Latent GOLD's user's guide. Boston: Statistical Innovations Inc.Google Scholar
Wauters, L. N., Tellings, A. E. J. M., van Bon, W. H. J., & van Haaften, W. A. (2003). Mode of Acquisition of word meanings: The viability of a theoretical construct. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 385406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wauters, L. N., Tellings, A. E. J. M., & van Bon, W. H. J. (2008). Mode of acquisition as a factor in deaf children's reading comprehension. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13, 175192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed