[kidsgames] word familiarity

[pkienzle@kienzle.powernet.co.uk (Paul Kienzle)]

>we have several gpl dictionaries, it may be nice to rate the word age
>appropriateness for the words that are out there.  /usr/share/dict/words
>and the dictd program come to mind.

The MRC Psycholinguistics Database rates familiarity for some 9400 nouns:

	FAM

	This stands for 'printed familiarity'. The FAM  values  were  de-
	rived from merging three sets of familiarity norms: Pavio (unpub-
	lished), Toglia and Battig (1978) and Gilhooly and Logie  (1980).
	The  method by which these three sets of norms were merged is de-
	scribed in detail in  Appendix  2  of  the  MRC  Psycholinguistic
	Database User Manual (Coltheart, 1981a). This method may not meet
	with everyone's approval. FAM values lie in the range 100 to  700
	with the maximum entry of 657, a mean of 488 and a standard devi-
	ation of 99: note that they are integer values (in  the  original
	norms the equivalent range was 1.00 to 7.00).

While probably rated by first year psych studentsi rather than 8 year
olds, it's a good bet that familiarity is related to age appropriateness.
An old professor of mine has a somewhat larger list from the same era
using 1st year psych students from southern Indiana.  I still have a copy
of it on tape, though I'm not sure he would be happy if I released it.
If somebody has access to PsychLit or other similar citation database
(CARL Uncover?), a quick search may turn up references to age appropriate
word lists directly.

Paul Kienzle
pkienzle@kienzle.powernet.co.uk
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