Abby Frankenberg is a Neuroscience & Behavior and English double major here at Wesleyan and is a part of the class of 2024. She is excited to investigate word formation processes in the lab. Outside of academics, she loves cats, creative writing, and spending time with friends and family.
Grace Devanny is a Senior Neuroscience and Behavior and Psychology double major from Concord, New Hampshire. She joined the lab her junior year and has been working on various projects such as the Wesleyan Word Experience project and future Eye-tracking studies. Outside the lab, she is a member of the Wesleyan track and field team and soccer team.
Meiwen Shoa
Meiwen is a part of the class of 2023 and majoring in Neuroscience & Behavior and Economics. She is from Shenzhen, which is a city located in southeastern China. Outside of academics, she enjoys figure skating, cooking, and spending time with her family!
Constance Hirwa
Constance Hirwa is a junior from Rwanda with a double major in Neuroscience and Behavior Program and Psychology. In this lab, she is particularly interested in the ways in which one’s native language affects their mental lexicon as well as how different types of words are processed among bilingual English speakers. Outside of the classroom, she enjoys poetry, photography, and painting. She also spent a good amount of time at the Resource Center as a marketing assistant.
Wiralpach Nawabutsitthirat
Wiralpach Mawabutsitthirat is a Psychology and Art Studio double major from New Haven, Connecticut. She joined the lab in her sophomore year and has worked on the Word and Sentence Ratings Project. She is pursuing a MA in Psychology through the BA/MA program. Her research is focused on how fonts affect reading. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, ice skating, and practicing kendo.
Abstract: The English language is constantly changing as peoples’ experiences with words change. Familiarity (Fam) and age of acquisition (AoA) are two determinants of the lexical quality of words. Fam measures how often a word is experienced (Gernsbacher, 1984), and AoA measures when a word is acquired (see Juhasz, 2005 for a review). The recognition of words is impacted by both AoA and Fam variables. This study tracks how Fam and AoA of 499 words change over time by collecting ratings through surveys of Wesleyan University Introductory Psychology students. By studying this change over time, we are able to compare the reported ratings to previously collected word recognition databases. Each participant was asked to rate words’ Fam and AoA (using a scale ranging from 1 to 7) based on their experience. There are currently four years of data collected between Fall 2019 and Spring 2023. Regression analyses have been used to track the trajectory of the words over the past four years. Based on the analyses, words have been categorized into three different groups: words that remain unchanged in AoA and Fam, those with upward trends, and those with downward trends.
