Anagram solving as a function of bigram rank and word frequency.

1 January 1967

journal article
Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Experimental Psychology

Vol. 75 (3) , 299-306
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025060

Abstract

STUDIED THE EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE VARIABLES ON ANAGRAM SOLVING. IN ADDITION TO VARYING THE FREQUENCY OF SOLUTION WORDS, THE BIGRAM-RANK (BR) TOTALS OF ANAGRAMS AND OF SOLUTION WORDS WERE MANIPULATED. THE RANK OF A BIGRAM (-1) INDICATES THE NUMBER OF MORE FREQUENT BIGRAMS WITH THE SAME INITIAL LETTER; TOTALS ARE OBTAINED BY SUMMING THE RANKS OF SUCCESSIVE BIGRAMS IN A LETTER SEQUENCE. PERFORMANCE IMPROVED WITH INCREASING WORD FREQUENCY. ANAGRAMS WITH HIGH BR WERE EASIER TO SOLVE THAN THOSE WITH LOW BR. IN EXP. I, EACH S SOLVED FOR WORDS WITH SIMILAR BR, AND PERFORMANCE 1ST DETERIORATED, THEN IMPROVED AS WORD BR INCREASED. IN EXP. II, EACH S SOLVED FOR WORDS WITH WIDELY VARYING BR, AND PERFORMANCE DECREASED LINEARLY WITH INCREASING WORD BR. SEVERAL INTERACTIONS AND PRACTICE EFFECTS WERE ALSO OBTAINED. (19 REF.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

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