Recognition times for 54 thousand Dutch words : data from the Dutch crowdsourcing project

We present a new database of Dutch word recognition times for a total of 54 thousand words, called the Dutch Crowdsourcing Project. The data were collected with an Internet vocabulary test. The database is limited to native Dutch speakers. Participants were asked to indicate which words they knew. Their response times were registered, even though the participants were not asked to respond as fast as possible. Still, the response times correlate around .7 with the response times of the Dutch Lexicon Projects for shared words. Also results of virtual experiments indicate that the new response times are a valid addition to the Dutch Lexicon Projects. This not only means that we have useful response times for some 20 thousand extra words, but we now also have data on differences in response latencies as a function of education and age. The new data correspond better to word use in the Netherlands

Subtlex-pl: subtitle-based word frequency estimates for Polish

We present SUBTLEX-PL, Polish word frequencies based on movie subtitles. In two lexical decision experiments, we compare the new measures with frequency estimates derived from another Polish text corpus that includes predominantly written materials. We show that the frequencies derived from the two corpora perform best in predicting human performance in a lexical decision task if used in a complementary way. Our results suggest that the two corpora may have unequal potential for explaining human performance for words in different frequency ranges and that corpora based on written materials severely overestimate frequencies for formal words. We discuss some of the implications of these findings for future studies comparing different frequency estimates. In addition to frequencies for word forms, SUBTLEX-PL includes measures of contextual diversity, part-of-speech-specific word frequencies, frequencies of associated lemmas, and word bigrams, providing researchers with necessary tools for conducting psycholinguistic research in Polish. The database is freely available for research purposes and may be downloaded from the authors' university Web site at http://crr.ugent.be/subtlex-p

Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas

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

How do Spanish speakers read words? Insights from a crowdsourced lexical decision megastudy

Published online: 18 February 2020Vocabulary size seems to be affected by multiple factors, including those that belong to the properties of the words themselves and those that relate to the characteristics of the individuals assessing the words. In this study, we present results from a crowdsourced lexical decision megastudy in which more than 150,000 native speakers from around 20 Spanish-speaking countries performed a lexical decision task to 70 target word items selected from a list of about 45,000 Spanish words. We examined how demographic characteristics such as age, education level, and multilingualism affected participants’ vocabulary size. Also, we explored how common factors related to words like frequency, length, and orthographic neighbourhood influenced the knowledge of a particular item. Results indicated important contributions of age to overall vocabulary size, with vocabulary size increasing in a logarithmic fashion with this factor. Furthermore, a contrast between monolingual and bilingual communities within Spain revealed no significant vocabulary size differences between the communities. Additionally, we replicated the standard effects of the words’ properties and their interactions, accurately accounting for the estimated knowledge of a particular word. These results highlight the value of crowdsourced approaches to uncover effects that are traditionally masked by smallsampled in-lab factorial experimental designs.This research is supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program and by the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2015-0490. This study was also partially supported by grants PGC2018-097145-B-I00, RED2018-102615-T, and RTI2018-093547-B-I00 from the Spanish State Research Agency. Work by JA was supported by “la Caixa” Foundation and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 713673, and fellowship code LCF/BQ/IN17/116200154004. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments and efforts towards improving this manuscript

SPALEX: A Spanish Lexical Decision Database From a Massive Online Data Collection

Published: 12 November 2018This research has been partially funded by grants PSI2015-65689-P and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, and AThEME-613465 from the European Union. Work by JA was supported by la Caixa Foundation and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 713673

Kontrola języka u osób dwujęzycznych: lokalne i globalne aspekty hamowania języka

W ramach niniejszej pracy badano mechanizmy kontroli języka u osóbdwujęzycznych przy zastosowaniu miar behawioralnych oraz potencjałów wywołanych(event-related potentials; ERP). Na pytania dotyczące występowania globalnych i lokalnychaspektów hamowania w kontroli języka, starano się odpowiedzieć przy użyciu procedury, wktórej osoby badane nazywały zestawy obrazków w pierwszym (L1) oraz drugim (L2)języku. W każdym z sześciu bloków, osoby badane używały tylko jednego języka – badani wjednej grupie w pierwszych dwóch blokach używali L1, a w kolejnych blokach L2. W drugiejgrupie kolejność ta była odwrócona. W blokach następujących po zmianie języka nazywanoobrazki powtórzone z pierwszych bloków oraz nowe. Chociaż zaobserwowane wynikibehawioralne w znacznej mierze przypominały te uzyskane we wcześniejszych badaniach, wprzypadku ERP otrzymano odmienny wzorzec wyników. Różnice te przypuszczalniespowodowane były zastosowaniem procedury, w której nazywanie obrazków nie byłoodroczone, jak we wcześniejszych badaniach, lecz następowało natychmiast po ichprezentacji. W pracy dyskutowane są metodologiczne oraz teoretyczne konsekwencjeuzyskanych wyników.Behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) measures are reported for anexperiment in which mechanisms of language control in bilinguals were investigated.Questions regarding involvement of global and local aspects of language inhibition wereaddressed by using procedure in which participants named pictures in their first (L1) andsecond (L2) language. In each of six blocks only one language was used, for one group ofparticipants L1 in the first two block and L2 in following blocks. For another group this orderwas reversed. After language change pictures repeated from initial blocks as well as newpictures were presented. Although the behavioural results closely resembled those obtained inthe previous studies, ERPs have shown differential pattern, possibly due to usage ofimmediate picture naming instead of delayed picture naming procedure. Methodological andtheoretical implications of the findings are discussed in the thesis

English Crowdsourcing Project

Reaction time data for 62K English words described in the article Mandera, P., Keuleers, E., & Brysbaert, M. (2020). Recognition times for 62 thousand English words: Data from the English Crowdsourcing Project. Behavior Research Methods