title: Lexico-semantic structure and the word-frequency effect in recognition memory.
abstract: The word-frequency effect (WFE) in recognition memory refers to the finding that more rare words are better recognized than more common words. We demonstrate that a familiarity-discrimination model operating on data from a semantic word-association space yields a robust WFE in data on both hit rates and false-alarm rates. Our modeling results suggest that word frequency is encoded in the semantic structure of language, and that this encoding contributes to the WFE observed in item-recognition experiments.
authors.affiliation: Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kolb Research Annex, New York, New York 10032-2695, USA. joe@neurotheory.columbia.edu
authors.forename: Joseph D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Monaco
authors.forename: L F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Abbott
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Kahana
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008960:Models, Psychological; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics