title: The influence of clustering coefficient on word-learning: how groups of similar sounding words facilitate acquisition.
abstract: Clustering coefficient, C, measures the extent to which neighbors of a word are also neighbors of each other, and has been shown to influence speech production, speech perception, and several memory-related processes. In this study we examined how C influences word-learning. Participants were trained over three sessions at 1-week intervals, and tested with a picture-naming task on nonword-nonobject pairs. We found an advantage for novel words with high C (the neighbors of this novel word are likely to be neighbors with each other), but only after the 1-week retention period with no additional exposures to the stimuli. The results are consistent with the spreading-activation network-model of the lexicon proposed by Chan and Vitevitch (2009). The influence of C on various language-related processes suggests that characteristics of the individual word are not the only things that influence processing; rather, lexical processing may also be influenced by the relationships that exist among words in the lexicon.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Kansas Lawrence, KS, USA.
authors.forename: Rutherford
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Goldstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Kansas Lawrence, KS, USA.
authors.forename: Michael S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Vitevitch
keywords: clustering coefficient; neighborhood density; network science; word-learning