You Can’t Drink a Word: Lexical and Individual Emotionality Affect Subjective Familiarity Judgments

For almost 30 years, subjective familiarity has been used in psycholinguistics as an explanatory variable, allegedly able to explain many phenomena that have no other obvious explanation (Gernsbacher in J Exp Psychol General 113:256–281, 1984). In this paper, the hypothesis tested is that the subjective familiarity of words is reflecting personal familiarity with or importance of the referents of words. Using an empirically-grounded model of affective force derived from Wundt (Grundriss der Psychologie [Outlines of Psychology]. Engelmann, Leibzig, 1896) and based in a co-occurrence model of semantics (which involves no human judgment), it is shown that affective force can account for the same variance in a large set of human subjective familiarity judgments as other human subjective familiarity judgments, can predict whether people will rate new words of the same objective frequency as more or less familiar, can predict lexical access as well as human subjective familiarity judgments do, and has a predicted relationship to age of acquisition norms. Individuals who have highly affective reactivity [as measured by Carver and White’s (J Pers Soc Psychol 67(2):319–333, 1994) Behavioral Inhibition Scale and Behavioral Activation Scales] rate words as significantly more familiar than individuals who have low affective reactivity.     

The subjective familiarity of English homophones

College students rated 828 homophonic words (words with the same pronunciation but different spellings) in terms of subjective familiarity. High interrater reliability was obtained, and the ratings correlated well with other published familiarity measures (r=.85). The familiarity ratings also correlated highly with log transforms of Ku?era and Francis’s (1967) printed frequency measures (r= 75). However, many words of equal log frequency varied widely in rated familiarity, and vice versa. To determine which of these two factors was the better predictor of verbal performance, we orthogonally varied the two in a lexical decision task and found that, for words of moderate frequency, rated familiarity was by far the better predictor. We conclude that even though printed frequency and rated familiarity generally covary, printed frequency is a less reliable index of the underlying psychological construct, word familiarity.     

Brain potentials of recollection and familiarity

It is widely hypothesized that separate recollection and familiarity processes contribute to recognition memory. The present research measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from 128 head locations to identify patterns of brain activity related to recollection and familiarity. In two experiments, subjects performed a recognition memory task requiring discrimination between previously studied words, similar words that changed plurality between study and test, and new words (following Hintzman & Curran, 1994). The FN400 ERP component (300-500 msec) varied with the familiarity of words (new > studied = similar). The parietal component (400-800 msec) was associated with the recollection of plurality (studied > similar = new). Differences in the timing and spatial topography of the FN400 and parietal effects support the view that familiarity and recollection arise from distinct neurocognitive processes.     

Word familiarity and retention

These experiments examine the relationship between subjects' familiarity judgements of words of similar (low) frequency and their recall or recognition of these words. The expected relationship between familiarity and recall was well confirmed, as was the less expected relationship between familiarity and recognition. An analysis of the vocabulary acquisition process led to more specific predictions about performance on delayed, as compared with immediate, retention tests. The most crucial of these predictions was that words which are familiar, but whose meanings are not known, are remembered by tagging sets of phonological (as opposed to semantic) features, leading to good immediate recall but poor delayed recall, and a greater likelihood of acoustic confusions following a delay. Some support was obtained for these predictions. However, subjects showed unexpectedly good retention of unknown words and it was felt that tagging alone does not account for all the findings.     

Evidence for several components of word familiarity

Familiarity with a word can be divided into two main components: familiarity with the form of the word (due to both its lexicality and its specific form) and familiarity with its meaning. In this study, ratings of familiarity were compared for words whose meaning was unknown to participants (UM words), for words of known meaning (KM words), and for unknown words (U words). Linguistic and experiential frequencies were equivalent. Rated familiarity was lower for UM than KM words and even lower for U words. Next, we built pseudowords from these stimuli by changing one letter and submitted them to two familiarity rating tasks that differed in the nature of the additional stimuli: either only nonwords or nonwords plus words. It was assumed that familiarity ratings would be lower for pseudowords built from UM words than for pseudowords built from KM words. The data were consistent with this assumption, and ratings depended on the initial categories of stimuli. These results support the view that usual word familiarity has two components, familiarity with form and familiarity with meaning, and a double source, processing of word form and processing of word meaning. The full set of these materials and norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Auditory-phonetic projection and lexical structure in the recognition of sine-wave words

Speech remains intelligible despite the elimination of canonical acoustic correlates of phonemes from the spectrum. A portion of this perceptual flexibility can be attributed to modulation sensitivity in the auditory-to-phonetic projection, although signal-independent properties of lexical neighborhoods also affect intelligibility in utterances composed of words. Three tests were conducted to estimate the effects of exposure to natural and sine-wave samples of speech in this kind of perceptual versatility. First, sine-wave versions of the easy and hard word sets were created, modeled on the speech samples of a single talker. The performance difference in recognition of easy and hard words was used to index the perceptual reliance on signal-independent properties of lexical contrasts. Second, several kinds of exposure produced familiarity with an aspect of sine-wave speech: (a) sine-wave sentences modeled on the same talker; (b) sine-wave sentences modeled on a different talker, to create familiarity with a sine-wave carrier; and (c) natural sentences spoken by the same talker, to create familiarity with the idiolect expressed in the sine-wave words. Recognition performance with both easy and hard sine-wave words improved after exposure only to sine-wave sentences modeled on the same talker. Third, a control test showed that signal-independent uncertainty is a plausible cause of differences in recognition of easy and hard sine-wave words. The conditions of beneficial exposure reveal the specificity of attention underlying versatility in speech perception.     

Not all sources of familiarity are created equal: the case of word frequency and repetition in episodic recognition

Low-frequency (LF) words produce higher hit rates and lower false alarm rates than high-frequency (HF) words. This word frequency mirror pattern has been interpreted within dual-process models of recognition, which assume the contributions of a slower recollective process and a relatively fast-acting familiarity process. In the present experiments, recollection and familiarity were placed in opposition using Jacoby, L. L., Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 513–541 (1991), two-list exclusion paradigm with HF and LF words. Exclusion errors to LF words exceeded those to HF words at fast deadlines, whereas the reverse occurred at slow deadlines. In Experiments 2 and 3, false alarms to HF nonpresented lures were higher than to LF nonpresented lures, indicating the use of baseline familiarity for totally new items. Combined, these results indicate that in addition to baseline familiarity and recollection, a third process involving the assessment of a relative change in familiarity is involved in recognition performance. Both relative changes in familiarity and recollection processes have distinct time courses and are engaged when there is diagnostic list information available, whereas baseline familiarity is used when there is no diagnostic information available (e.g., for nonpresented lure items).     

When meaning is useless

The aim of this study is to disentangle the relative contribution of semantic and phonological representation in immediate serial recall. Indeed, short-term memory (STM) performance could be enhanced by familiarity with the phonological form of the word only or together with semantic information. Participants learned two sets of words in an unknown language: for one set they acquired both phonology and semantics, while for the other only phonology. After that, they performed two immediate serial recall tasks involving either “phonology and semantics” or “only phonology” words and one with untrained words. The analyses showed that the trained lists did not differ from each other, while they did from the untrained one. These data confirm that familiarity with the phonological form is sufficient for immediate serial recall. Therefore, we argue that semantics is not required for verbal STM, but knowledge of the phonological form is what matters.     

Accuracy and speed strategies in scanning active memory

The effect of speed and accuracy payoff on performance in a short-term memory scanning task was investigated under two conditions of familiarity of material and two conditions of payoff. Memory sets and probes were either drawn from a small well learned pool of words (thefamiliar set) or were sampled without replacement from a very large pool of words (theinfinite set). Under both payoffs the infinite memory sets were searched at a faster rate than the familiar sets. The speed payoff reduced the constant component of latencies and, contrary to previous findings, increased the rate of memory search for both sets. Errors increased from about 1% with accuracy payoff to 19% with speed payoff. Under speed payoff most of the errors were false positives for the familiar set and false negatives for the infinite set. Several models of the task were considered, but none proved entirely satisfactory.     

Taboo,emotionally valenced,and emotionally neutral word norms

Although taboo words are used to study emotional memory and attention, no easily accessible normative data are available that compare taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral words on the same scales. Frequency, inappropriateness, valence, arousal, and imageability ratings for taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral words were made by 78 native-English-speaking college students from a large metropolitan university. The valenced set comprised both positive and negative words, and the emotionally neutral set comprised category-related and category-unrelated words. To account for influences of demand characteristics and personality factors on the ratings, frequency and inappropriateness measures were decomposed into raters’ personal reactions to the words versus raters’ perceptions of societal reactions to the words (personal use vs. familiarity and offensiveness vs. tabooness, respectively). Although all word sets were rated higher in familiarity and tabooness than in personal use and offensiveness, these differences were most pronounced for the taboo set. In terms of valence, the taboo set was most similar to the negative set, although it yielded higher arousal ratings than did either valenced set. Imageability for the taboo set was comparable to that of both valenced sets. The ratings of each word are presented for all participants as well as for single-sex groups. The inadequacies of the application of normative data to research that uses emotional words and the conceptualization of taboo words as a coherent category are discussed. Materials associated with this article may be accessed at the Psychonomic Society’s Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Frequency of word usage and perceived word difficulty: Ratings of Kučera and Francis words

Twenty-four judges estimated the conceptual difficulty level of 870 five-letter words, using a 5-point scale. The words were selected from three word-frequency categories (1, 5–10, and 50–3,562/million) based on the word counts provided by Ku?era and Francis (1967). The ratings were reliable. Tables in this paper list the means and standard deviations of the ratings for each word. Reaction time (RT) for valid word identification was tested in 20 subjects, using four sets of 50 words designed to test the effects of word frequency and word difficulty. RT was longer for more difficult words when word frequency was held constant. A word-frequency effect on RT was present when difficulty was held constant. The relationship of the results to subjective estimates of word familiarity is discussed.     

Affective significance enhances covert attention: Roles of anxiety and word familiarity

To investigate the processing of emotional words by covert attention, threat-related, positive, and neutral word primes were presented parafoveally (2.2° away from fixation) for 150 ms, under gaze-contingent foveal masking, to prevent eye fixations. The primes were followed by a probe word in a lexical-decision task. In Experiment 1, results showed a parafoveal threat–anxiety superiority: Parafoveal prime threat words facilitated responses to probe threat words for high-anxiety individuals, in comparison with neutral and positive words, and relative to low-anxiety individuals. This reveals an advantage in threat processing by covert attention, without differences in overt attention. However, anxiety was also associated with greater familiarity with threat words, and the parafoveal priming effects were significantly reduced when familiarity was covaried out. To further examine the role of word knowledge, in Experiment 2, vocabulary and word familiarity were equated for low- and high-anxiety groups. In these conditions, the parafoveal threat–anxiety advantage disappeared. This suggests that the enhanced covert-attention effect depends on familiarity with words.     

Orthography and familiarity effects in word processing

Both orthographic regularity and visual familiarity have been implicated as contributors to the efficiency of processing visually presented words. Our studies sought to determine which of the internal codes representing words in the nervous system are facilitated by these two variables. To do this, sets of letter strings in which orthography and familiarity were factorially combined were used as the basis for physical, phonetic, semantic, and lexical judgments. The data indicated consistent effects of orthography on the activation of all codes. These effects were seen in same-different matching and in judgments of stimulus orientation, which are based on visual codes; in judgments of pronounceability based on phonetic codes; in judgments of meaningfulness based on semantic codes; and in lexical decisions, which are based on phonetic and semantic codes together. Familiarity, on the other hand, had a clear influence on the activation of semantic codes and to a lesser extent affected phonetic codes. Despite previous positive results found in matching letter strings, however, no influence of familiarity occurred in judgments based on visual codes once evidence for criterion shifting was eliminated. Our negative results included direct tests of facilitation in matching acronyms (e.g., FBI) and in matching both regular and irregular strings familiarized by specific training. It now appears that earlier findings of visual familiarity effects may be attributed to response biases resulting from the activation of higher level codes sensitive to familiarity, and to the use of small sets of training stimuli that allowed subjects to induce orthographic-like rules. The results obtained so far with our methods seem to reconcile an inconsistent literature by showing that speeded decisions based on visual codes are most strongly influenced by rule-governed processing mechanisms sensitive to orthographic structure, whereas decisions based on phonetic and semantic codes are affected about equally by rule-governed mechanisms and by stimulus-specific mechanisms sensitive to familiarity. This conclusion may lead to changes in notions of how effective various kinds of visual training are likely to be at different stages in the acquisition of reading skill.     

MRC Psycholinguistic Database search program

This paper describes a computer search program based on the Medical Research Council Psycholinguistic Database of English words. The program allows words to be extracted from that database according to word length, number of syllables or phonemes, and various psycholinguistic criteria such as frequency of use, imageability, concreteness, meaning, and so forth. Thus it is possible to create, for example, lists of two-syllable words of high and low familiarity. It is also possible to examine properties of given sets of words created by the researcher. Lists of these words with or without their properties and with or without a statistical analysis of those properties may be produced. Particular spellings but not particular phonemes may be searched for.     

Affective significance enhances covert attention: roles of anxiety and word familiarity

To investigate the processing of emotional words by covert attention, threat-related, positive, and neutral word primes were presented parafoveally (2.2 degrees away from fixation) for 150 ms, under gaze-contingent foveal masking, to prevent eye fixations. The primes were followed by a probe word in a lexical-decision task. In Experiment 1, results showed a parafoveal threat-anxiety superiority: Parafoveal prime threat words facilitated responses to probe threat words for high-anxiety individuals, in comparison with neutral and positive words, and relative to low-anxiety individuals. This reveals an advantage in threat processing by covert attention, without differences in overt attention. However, anxiety was also associated with greater familiarity with threat words, and the parafoveal priming effects were significantly reduced when familiarity was covaried out. To further examine the role of word knowledge, in Experiment 2, vocabulary and word familiarity were equated for low- and high-anxiety groups. In these conditions, the parafoveal threat-anxiety advantage disappeared. This suggests that the enhanced covert-attention effect depends on familiarity with words.     

The development of the use of long-term knowledge to assist short-term recall

The influence of item familiarity upon memory span was examined in adults and children aged 5, 7, and 10 years by comparing the recall of words and nonwords. Using a probed recall task, both item recall and position recall were tested. The effect of familiarity upon item recall was found to develop with age, from no effects in the 5-year-olds to significant effects in the older children and adults. By contrast, no effect of familiarity was found at any age when recall of position was required. Dissociations between word length effects and familiarity effects supported the conclusion that the familiarity effect does not result from rehearsal. Several explanations for the source of the familiarity effect were examined, and the familiarity effect was attributed to a strategic redintegration or reconstruction process, which is necessary for item recall but not for position recall.     

The similarities (and familiarities) of pseudowords and extremely high-frequency words: examining a familiarity-based explanation of the pseudoword effect

The pseudoword effect is the finding that pseudowords (i.e., rare words or pronounceable nonwords) give rise to more hits and false alarms than words. Using the retrieving effectively from memory (REM) model of recognition memory, we tested a familiarity-based account of the pseudoword effect: Specifically, the pseudoword effect arises because pseudowords lack distinctive semantic meanings. Because semantics can differentiate orthographically similar words (e.g., horse vs. house), by lacking distinctive semantics, pseudowords have greater interitem similarity than words, and hence more familiarity, which gives rise to the pseudoword effect. Across two sets of simulations, we demonstrate that this account explains the pseudoword effect in addition to accounting for why the pseudoword effect is absent when irregular nonwords are compared with words. Furthermore, our modeling efforts suggest a novel experiment that leads us to the discovery of a new concordant effect. Namely, extremely high-frequency words behave like pseudowords (giving rise to more hits and false alarms than high-frequency words) and also have less distinctive semantics than high-frequency words. We conclude that our work provides strong evidence in favor of the familiarity-based accounts of the pseudoword effect. We discuss the implications of our research with regard to various issues surrounding the pseudoword effect and REM model.     

Word familiarity and frequency in visual and auditory word recognition

Four experiments investigate printed word frequency and subjective rated familiarity. Words of varied printed frequency and subjective familiarity were presented. A reaction time advantage for high-familiarity and high-frequency words was found in visual (Experiment 1) and auditory (Experiment 2) lexical decision. In Experiments 3 and 4, a cued naming task elicited a naming response after a specified delay after presentation. In Experiment 3, naming of visual words showed a frequency effect with no naming delay. The frequency effect diminished at longer delay intervals. Naming times for auditorily presented words (Experiment 4) showed no frequency effect at any delay. Both naming experiments showed familiarity effects. The relevance of these results are discussed in terms of the role of printed frequency for theories of lexical access, task- and modality-specific effects, and the nature of subjective familiarity.     

The neurobiology of adaptive learning in reading: A contrast of different training conditions

fMRI was used to investigate the separate influences of orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing on the ability to learn new words and the cortical circuitry recruited to subsequently read those words. In a behavioral session, subjects acquired familiarity for three sets of pseudowords, attending to orthographic, phonological, or (learned) semantic features. Transfer effects were measured in an event-related fMRI session as the subjects named trained pseudowords, untrained pseudowords, and real words. Behaviorally, phonological and semantic training resulted in better learning than did orthographic training. Neurobiologically, orthographic training did not modulate activation in the main reading regions. Phonological and semantic training yielded equivalent behavioral facilitation but distinct functional activation patterns, suggesting that the learning resulting from these two training conditions was driven by different underlying processes. The findings indicate that the putative ventral visual word form area is sensitive to the phonological structure of words, with phonologically analytic processing contributing to the specialization of this region.