How adults' experience with words changes over time: Insights from five years of the Wesleyan Word Experience Project.

Abstract

This study explored how adults' experiences with words may change over time. Ratings of age-of-acquisition (AoA) and familiarity were collected on 499 words from introductory psychology students each semester, for a total of 5 years. Over the course of ten semesters, ratings were collected from more than 1000 students. One goal of this multi-year project was to explore whether it is possible to assess lexical change for particular words. Regression analyses were used to track the trajectory of the words. Based on the analyses, words were categorized into three different groups: words that remain consistent in AoA and familiarity, those with upward trajectories, and those with downward trajectories. A total of 63 words were identified as undergoing experience-based lexical change. The project also explored how AoA and familiarity relate to each other over time as well as each variable's interrater reliability over the course of 5 years. Both AoA and familiarity had strong correlations when comparing ratings collected from the first five semesters of the project with ratings collected from the last five semesters of the project. These correlations were significantly higher than the correlation between the two variables, supporting the idea that they are separate constructs. Average familiarity and AoA for the entire set of words did not differ as a function of time. In addition, AoA was found to have the highest correlation with itself, providing evidence that college undergraduates consistently apply the rating scale when asked to assess the age at which words are first learned.