Pronunciation and the Frequency Meaningfulness Effect in Children's Frequency Discrimination.

In an absolute frequency judgment task, 130 sixth graders received either high-frequency (Hi-F), low-frequency, high-meaningfulness (Lo-F/Hi-M), or low-frequency, low-meaningfulness (Lo-F/Lo-M) words selected from the 1944 Thorndike-Lorge list. Subjects were asked to either pronounce the words aloud, listen to the examiner prounounce the written words, or read the words silently. Pronunciation by either the subject or the examiner was found to increase the accuracy of frequency judgment for Lo-F/Hi-M words substantially more than it did for the other groups of words. It is suggested that the pronunciation of the Lo-F/Hi-M words serves to decode the written word into its oral form and increase the likelihood that these potentially meaningful words will elicit meaning responses from subjects during the frequency judgment task. (MKM)