How Perceptual Accessibility Influences Word Learning: Presenting a Metric for Scaling Word Difficulty

• In Event: 3-070 - Choosing Words to Teach: A Theory-Informed Approach

Integrative Statement

Maguire et al.’s (2006) continuum of perceptual accessibility (2006) posits that all words lie along a continuum determined by factors such as concreteness, imageability, and shape. Words’ relative position on this continuum influences their ease of acquisition, with highly concrete, imageable words such as baseball being easier to learn than words such as although, which have no concrete referent and can only be explained through language. In a recent study, preschoolers’ word-learning was influenced by words’ perceptual accessibility, with concrete nouns learned better than concrete verbs, which in turn were learned better than abstract nouns and adjectives (Hadley et al., 2016).
The present study operationalizes the perceptual accessibility continuum theory to create a metric for scaling word difficulty across form classes. Table 1 presents the complete Perceptual Accessibility Continuum (PAC) coding scheme. This study also compares the PAC ratings for words used in a preschool vocabulary intervention (Hadley et al., 2016) to other ratings of word difficulty.
The PAC rating system is comprised of three dimensions: concreteness, imageability, and shape. Concreteness refers to the degree to which a word is learned through the senses versus through language (Brysbaert, 2014; Andrews et al., 2009). Research has established that the concreteness of a word relates to its ease of processing, retention, and age of acquisition (Paivio, 1986; Schwanenflugei, Akin, & Luh, 1992). Imageability refers to the ease with which an image can be formed in the mind for a word. Imageability predicts age of acquisition above and beyond input frequency (Ma, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, McDonough, & Tardif, 2009), and is highly correlated with, but distinct from, concreteness (Bird, Franklin, & Howard, 2001). Shape refers to how much consistency in outline an object or action would have if traced (Diesendruck & Bloom, 2003; Golinkoff et al., 2002; Golinkoff et al., 1995). There is evidence that children extend nouns (Smith, 2000) and verbs (Golinkoff et al., 2002; Golinkoff et al., 1995) on the basis of shape, and that objects and actions with more consistent shapes may be easier for children to learn.
Scores from the three dimensions (see Table 1) are summed to create a total score for the perceptual accessibility of individual words. Overall scoring is weighted towards the dimensions of imageability and concreteness, as the research base for these two dimensions is the most robust. The PAC system was used to rate 37 words used in a vocabulary intervention for preschool children (Hadley et al., 2016). These ratings were then compared to Biemiller’s Words Worth Teaching (2010), Beck and McKeown’s (2007) tier system, the Dale-Chall rare word list (1995), age of acquisition norms (Kuperman, Stadthagen-Gonzalez, & Brysbaert, 2012), and concreteness ratings (Brysbaert et al., 2014). Preliminary results suggest that PAC ratings are correlated with, but distinct from, ratings of concreteness (r = .75) and age of acquisition (r = -.22), and allow for greater precision in rating words as compared to the tier system, rare word list, and Words Worth Teaching. Implications for choosing words for instruction and research purposes will be discussed.

Authors

• Elizabeth Burke Hadley, University of South Florida
  Presenting Author

• David K Dickinson, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Univ of DE
  Non-Presenting Author