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Cited by 207Reading and Literacy DevelopmentSecond Language Acquisition and LearningLexicography and Language Studies

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Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas

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Brysbaert, Marc, Mandera, Paweł, McCormick, Samantha F., Keuleers, Emmanuel·2019·Behavior Research Methods
DOI 10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9
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Abstract

We present word prevalence data for 61,858 English words. Word prevalence refers to the number of people who know the word. The measure was obtained on the basis of an online crowdsourcing study involving over 220,000 people. Word prevalence data are useful for gauging the difficulty of words and, as such, for matching stimulus materials in experimental conditions or selecting stimulus materials for vocabulary tests. Word prevalence also predicts word processing times, over and above the effects of word frequency, word length, similarity to other words, and age of acquisition, in line with previous findings in the Dutch language.

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  • Some norming studies norm variables which are clearly not ordinal, such as word prevalence from a binomial decision.

    “Some norming studies, meanwhile, norm variables which are clearly not ordinal. For example, participants may provide norms to a binomial decision, such as whether they know a given word (word prevalence; Brysbaert et al., 2019).”

    From Rating norms should be calculated from cumulative link mixed effects models (2022) · cites this paper as Brysbaert et al., 2019

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Metadata

Authors
Brysbaert, M., Mandera, P., McCormick, S. F., & Keuleers, E.
Affiliations
  • Ghent University (BE)
  • University of Roehampton (GB)
  • Tilburg University (NL)
Corresponding author
Brysbaert, Marc
ORCID
Venue
Behavior Research Methods
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2018-07-02
Volume
51
Issue
2
Pages
467-479
ISSN
  • 1554-351X (ISSN-L)
  • 1554-3528
DOI
10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9
OpenAlex
W2810597146
Cited by
207
References
51
Citations by year
2026: 16 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 33 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 1
FWCI
31.41
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
Locations
  • Behavior Research Methods (publishedVersion)
  • Research portal (Tilburg University) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
  • Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Odysseus Award Government of Flanders
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Second Language Acquisition and Learning
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Lexicography and Language Studies
Keywords
English vocabulary, vocabulary knowledge, word difficulty, stimulus selection, vocabulary test, word frequency, age of acquisition, word similarity, crowdsourcing
MeSH terms
Adult, Female, Humans, Language Tests, Vocabulary, Knowledge, Crowdsourcing

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