knitr::opts_chunk$set( collapse = TRUE, warning = FALSE, comment = "#>", fig.path = "man/figures/README-", fig.height = 5, fig.width = 5 # out.width = "100%" ) options(digits = 4, width=100) library(WordPools)
Word Pools Used in Studies of Learning and Memory
Version: 1.2.0
This package collects several classical word pools used most often to provide lists of words in psychological studies of learning and memory.
Each word pool consists of a population of words, together with various descriptive measures (number of letters, number of syllables, word frequency, etc.) and normative measures (imagery, concreteness, etc.) that can be used in experimental designs to vary and control such factors.
One typical use is to design an experiment where stimulus words vary systematically in one or more variables across conditions, but other variables are controlled by random selection.
Other uses are to examine the factor structure of relations among these measures of word properties.
The following word pools are available in the package:
TWP
) - from Friendly et al. (1982), contains 1080 words in various grammatical classes (nouns, adjectives, and verbs), taken originally from the Thorndike-Lorge (1944) norms)Paivio
) - The Paivio, Yuille & Madigan (1968) word pool contains 925 nouns, together
with average ratings of these words on imagery, concreteness and meaningfulness, along with other variablesBattig
) - This dataset, from Battig & Montague (1968)
comprises a ranked list of 5231 words listed in 56 taxonomic categories by people who were asked to list as many exemplars of a given category.CatProp
) - Properties of the 56 taxonomic categories from the Battig-Montague
category norms published by Joelson and Hermann (1978)A simple function, pickList()
is provided for the task of selecting several random samples
of words from a given word pool, with restrictions on the ranges of available variables.
~~A legacy web app (no longer maintained) for randomly selecting lists of words from the Paivio word pool is provided at Friendly (2006) Paivio Word list generator.~~
A shiny app for randomly selecting lists of words from the Paivio word pool is provided at Friendly & Dubins (2019a) Paivio Word list generator.
A similar app for selecting lists from the Toronto Word Pool is provided at Friendly & Dubins (2019b) Toronto Word Pool list generator.
Install the current released version from CRAN:
install.packages("WordPools")
Select two lists of items of 5 items each from the Paivio pool:
set.seed(42) # for reproducibility pickList(Paivio, nitems=5, nlists=2)
Using a list of ranges for imagery and concreteness:
L <- list(imagery=c(1,5), concreteness=c(1,4)) pickList(Paivio, ranges =L, nitems=4)
Define ranges for low and high on imagery, concreteness, meaningfulness These go from low - median, and median-high on each variable
vars <- 3:5 (low <- as.data.frame(apply(Paivio[,vars], 2, fivenum))[c(1,3),]) (high <- as.data.frame(apply(Paivio[,vars], 2, fivenum))[c(3,5),])
Select two lists of 10 low/high imagery items:
lowI <- pickList(Paivio, low[,"imagery", drop=FALSE], nitems=10, nl=2) highI <- pickList(Paivio, high[,"imagery", drop=FALSE], nitems=10, nl=2) # compare means colMeans(lowI[,c(4:8)]) colMeans(highI[,c(4:8)])
dplyr
The dplyr
package makes it easy to select items meeting arbitrary criteria. Here we filter()
on
ranges for three variables in the TWP
to get a reduced pool:
library(dplyr) selected <- TWP |> filter( canadian == 0) |> # remove Canadian spellings filter( imagery <= 5, concreteness <= 4, frequency <= 30) |> select(word, imagery:frequency ) str(selected)
Then, draw two random lists:
nitems <- 5 nlists <- 2 lists <- selected |> sample_n( nitems*nlists, replace=FALSE) |> mutate(list = rep(1:nlists, each=nitems)) str(lists) lists |> knitr::kable()
A simple function gives a density plot of any variable. It's interesting that these two are bimodal.
#| out.width = "49%", #| fig.show = "hold" plotDensity(TWP, "imagery") plotDensity(TWP, "concreteness")
Paivio, A., Yuille, J.C. & Madigan S. Concreteness, imagery and meaningfulness for 925 nouns. (1968) Journal of Experimental Psychology, Monograph Supplement, 76, No.1, pt.2.
Battig, W.F. & Montague, W.E. (1969). Category norms for verbal items in 56 categories: A replication and extension of the Connecticut norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 80 (1969), pp. 1-46
Friendly, M. (2006) Paivio Word list generator
Friendly, M. & Dubins, M. (2019a) Paivio Word list generator, Online application.
Friendly, M. & Dubins, M. (2019b) Toronto Word Pool list generator, Online application.
Friendly, M., Franklin, P., Hoffman, D. & Rubin, D. The Toronto Word Pool, Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, 1982, 14(4), 375-399. TWP paper PDF
Add the following code to your website.
For more information on customizing the embed code, read Embedding Snippets.