{"pk":27817,"title":"Word Frequency Can Affect What You Choose to Say","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Though communicative goals clearly drive word choice in\nlanguage production, online demands suggest that accessibility\nmight play a role, too. If the benefits of accessibility are\nimportant enough to communication, more accessible words\n(high-frequency words) might be chosen over more accurate,\nless accessible ones. We used a novel artificial language\nlearning paradigm to test whether high-frequency words are\npreferred over low-frequency words at a cost of meaning\naccuracy. Participants learned eight words which corresponded\nto precise angles on a compass. On test trials, participants\nviewed angles lying in-between two trained angles and were\nasked to produce a word for the angle. Across two experiments,\nwe showed that participants extended their use of high-\nfrequency words to more distal angles compared to low-\nfrequency words. In cases of competition between high- and\nlow-frequency words, the former tended to win out even when\nless accurate, suggesting that accessibility can compromise\nsome accuracy.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Lexical access"},{"word":"accessibility"},{"word":"Word frequency"},{"word":"Artificial language"},{"word":"Lexical bias"},{"word":"Language Production"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5hj8w9gz","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Mark","middle_name":"","last_name":"Koranda","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconson - Madison","department":""},{"first_name":"Martin","middle_name":"","last_name":"Zettersten","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconson - Madison","department":""},{"first_name":"Maryellen","middle_name":"C","last_name":"MacDonald","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconson - Madison","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27817/galley/17456/download/"}]}