How do you determine the difficulty of individual words?

[Catherine Crain-Thoreson]

Many people use printed word frequency for this purpose.  The reference for
word frequency that I'm aware of is Carroll, J., Davies, P., & Richman, B.
(1971).  Word frequency book.  New York:  American Heritage Publishing.
There may be a newer edition.

You might find Mark Seidenberg's work of interest.  He and colleagues
differentiate several different categories of words in reading tasks.  The
reference I have handy is Seidenberg, M., Bruck, M., Fornarolo, & Backman,
J. (1985)  Word recognition processes of poor and disabled readers: Do they
necessarily differ?  Applied Psycholinguistics, 6, 161-180.

There's quite a large literature on what makes word recognition difficult
or easy.  Frequency and regularity of spelling pattern are two major
factors.  Is this what you're after?

Catherine Crain-Thoreson


At 04:38 PM 3/15/99 -0500, russgrd2 at psych1.psy.sunysb.edu wrote:
>I need to write a story in which I manipulate the difficulty of individual
>words.  I need a version with easy to read words and a version with hard to
>read words.  I have not been able to locate an objective method for
>determining the difficulty of these words.  Is anyone aware of a method
>that might help me in this task?
>
>--Brett Stoltz
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>|  Brett Stoltz
>|  Department of Psychology
>|  SUNY at Stony Brook
>|  Stony Brook, NY  11794-1200
>|  voice: (516) 632-7870
>|  fax:   (516) 632-7871
>|  e-mail: russgrd2 at psych1.psy.sunysb.edu
>|  Stony Brook Reading and Language Project
>|  http://www.read+lang.sbs.sunysb.edu/
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>



*********************************
Catherine Crain-Thoreson, Ph.D.
Psychology Department
Western Washington University
Bellingham, WA 98225-9089

Tel: (360) 650-3168
Fax: (360) 650-7305
e-mail: thoreson at cc.wwu.edu
http://www.wwu.edu/~thoreson
*********************************