Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing
In this Perspective Article we assess the usefulness of Google’s new word frequencies for word recognition research (lexical decision and word naming). We find that, despite the massive corpus on which the Google estimates are based (131 billion words from books published in the United States alone)...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2011-03-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00027/full |
| _version_ | 1819157640530362368 |
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| author | Marc eBrysbaert Emmanuel eKeuleers Boris eNew |
| author_facet | Marc eBrysbaert Emmanuel eKeuleers Boris eNew |
| author_sort | Marc eBrysbaert |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In this Perspective Article we assess the usefulness of Google’s new word frequencies for word recognition research (lexical decision and word naming). We find that, despite the massive corpus on which the Google estimates are based (131 billion words from books published in the United States alone), the Google American English frequencies explain 11% less of the variance in the lexical decision times from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) than the SUBTLEX-US word frequencies, based on a corpus of 51 million words from film and television subtitles. Further analyses indicate that word frequencies derived from recent books (published after 2000) are better predictors of word processing times than frequencies based on the full corpus, and that word frequencies based on fiction books predict word processing times better than word frequencies based on the full corpus. The most predictive word frequencies from Google still do not explain more of the variance in word recognition times of undergraduate students and old adults than the subtitle-based word frequencies. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-22T16:11:59Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-f3567c0e9e49480b88fa36a842af1e11 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-22T16:11:59Z |
| publishDate | 2011-03-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-f3567c0e9e49480b88fa36a842af1e112022-12-21T18:20:29ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782011-03-01210.3389/fpsyg.2011.000279569Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processingMarc eBrysbaert0Emmanuel eKeuleers1Boris eNew2Ghent UniversityGhent UniversityUniversité Paris Descartes, CNRS, FranceIn this Perspective Article we assess the usefulness of Google’s new word frequencies for word recognition research (lexical decision and word naming). We find that, despite the massive corpus on which the Google estimates are based (131 billion words from books published in the United States alone), the Google American English frequencies explain 11% less of the variance in the lexical decision times from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) than the SUBTLEX-US word frequencies, based on a corpus of 51 million words from film and television subtitles. Further analyses indicate that word frequencies derived from recent books (published after 2000) are better predictors of word processing times than frequencies based on the full corpus, and that word frequencies based on fiction books predict word processing times better than word frequencies based on the full corpus. The most predictive word frequencies from Google still do not explain more of the variance in word recognition times of undergraduate students and old adults than the subtitle-based word frequencies.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00027/fullword recognitionGoogle Books ngramslexical decisionsubtitle word frequenciessubtlexword frequency |
| spellingShingle | Marc eBrysbaert Emmanuel eKeuleers Boris eNew Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing Frontiers in Psychology word recognition Google Books ngrams lexical decision subtitle word frequencies subtlex word frequency |
| title | Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing |
| title_full | Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing |
| title_fullStr | Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing |
| title_full_unstemmed | Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing |
| title_short | Assessing the usefulness of google books’ word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing |
| title_sort | assessing the usefulness of google books word frequencies for psycholinguistic research on word processing |
| topic | word recognition Google Books ngrams lexical decision subtitle word frequencies subtlex word frequency |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00027/full |
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