Corpora: Subjective familiarity and objective frequency counts

From: Bruce Lambert (lambertb@uic.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 00:53:30 MET DST

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    Does anyone know of research examining the correlation between subjective
    assessments of familiarity/frequency (i.e., how often do you see, hear,
    read, write, speak this word?) and objective frequency counts (based on
    large corpora)?

    I know of one such paper by the psycholinguist Paul Luce (I will provide
    the reference when I can find it again). Any other pointers or comments on
    this issue are welcome.

    My specific interest is in the relationship between the prescribing
    frequency of specific drugs (drug names) and health professionals'
    subjective familiarity with those same names. This kind of information is
    very important in psycholinguistic research, where the effects of word
    frequency can be quite overpowering.

    On a related note, I'd appreciate pointers to any corpus of
    medical/pharmaceutical/nursing literature that might serve as the basis for
    an empirical count of drug names in the professional or scientific press.

    -bruce

    Bruce L. Lambert, PhD
    Department of Pharmacy Administration
    University of Illinois at Chicago
    833 S. Wood St. (M/C 871)
    Chicago, IL 60612-7231

    phone: 312-996-2411
    fax: 312-996-0868



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