nips nips2000 nips2000-131 nips2000-131-reference knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: pdf
Author: Mark A. Smith, Garrison W. Cottrell, Karen L. Anderson
Abstract: The strong correlation between the frequency of words and their naming latency has been well documented. However, as early as 1973, the Age of Acquisition (AoA) of a word was alleged to be the actual variable of interest, but these studies seem to have been ignored in most of the literature. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in AoA. While some studies have shown that frequency has no effect when AoA is controlled for, more recent studies have found independent contributions of frequency and AoA. Connectionist models have repeatedly shown strong effects of frequency, but little attention has been paid to whether they can also show AoA effects. Indeed, several researchers have explicitly claimed that they cannot show AoA effects. In this work, we explore these claims using a simple feed forward neural network. We find a significant contribution of AoA to naming latency, as well as conditions under which frequency provides an independent contribution. 1 Background Naming latency is the time between the presentation of a picture or written word and the beginning of the correct utterance of that word. It is undisputed that there are significant differences in the naming latency of many words, even when controlling word length, syllabic complexity, and other structural variants. The cause of differences in naming latency has been the subject of numerous studies. Earlier studies found that the frequency with which a word appears in spoken English is the best determinant of its naming latency (Oldfield & Wingfield, 1965). More recent psychological studies, however, show that the age at which a word is learned, or its Age of Acquisition (AoA), may be a better predictor of naming latency. Further, in many multiple regression analyses, frequency is not found to be significant when AoA is controlled for (Brown & Watson, 1987; Carroll & White, 1973; Morrison et al. 1992; Morrison & Ellis, 1995). These studies show that frequency and AoA are highly correlated (typically r =-.6) explaining the confound of older studies on frequency. However, still more recent studies question this finding and find that both AoA and frequency are significant and contribute independently to naming latency (Ellis & Morrison, 1998; Gerhand & Barry, 1998,1999). Much like their psychological counterparts, connectionist networks also show very strong frequency effects. However, the ability of a connectionist network to show AoA effects has been doubted (Gerhand & Barry, 1998; Morrison & Ellis, 1995). Most of these claims are based on the well known fact that connectionist networks exhibit