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An online calculator to compute phonotactic probability and neighborhood density on the basis of child corpora of spoken American English

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Abstract

An online calculator was developed (www.bncdnet.ku.edu/cml/info_ccc.vi) to compute phonotactic probability—the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence—and neighborhood density—the number of phonologically similar words—on the basis of child corpora of American English (Kolson, 1960; Moe, Hopkins, & Rush, 1982) and to compare its results to those of an adult calculator. Phonotactic probability and neighborhood density were computed for a set of 380 nouns (Fenson et al., 1993) using both the child and adult corpora. The child and adult raw values were significantly correlated. However, significant differences were detected. Specifically, child phonotactic probability was higher than adult phonotactic probability, especially for highprobability words, and child neighborhood density was lower than adult neighborhood density, especially for words with high-density neighborhoods. These differences were reduced or eliminated when relative measures (i.e., z scores) were used. Suggestions are offered regarding which values to use in future research.

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Author notes

  1. Jill R. Hoover

    Present address: Indiana University, Bloomington

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders, University of Kansas, 3001 Dole Human Development Center, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue, 66045-7555, Lawrence, KS

    Holly L. Storkel & Jill R. Hoover

Authors
  1. Holly L. Storkel
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  2. Jill R. Hoover
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Holly L. Storkel.

Additional information

This research was supported by NIH Grants DC08095, DC00052, DC009135, DC05803, and HD02528. Douglas S. Kieweg created the Web interface and program for the online calculator. The following individuals contributed to development of the child corpus and/or data processing and analysis: Shinying Chu, Maki Sueto, and Ashlee Widler.

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Storkel, H.L., Hoover, J.R. An online calculator to compute phonotactic probability and neighborhood density on the basis of child corpora of spoken American English. Behavior Research Methods 42, 497–506 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.42.2.497

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.42.2.497

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