In this Perspective Article we assess the usefulness of Google's new word frequencies for word recognition research (lexical decision and word naming). We find that, despite the massive corpus on which the Google estimates are based (131 billion words from books published in the United States alone), the Google American English frequencies explain 11% less of the variance in the lexical decision times from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) than the SUBTLEX-US word frequencies, based on a corpus of 51 million words from film and television subtitles. Further analyses indicate that word frequencies derived from recent books (published after 2000) are better predictors of word processing times than frequencies based on the full corpus, and that word frequencies based on fiction books predict word processing times better than word frequencies based on the full corpus. The most predictive word frequencies from Google still do not explain more of the variance in word recognition times of undergraduate students and old adults than the subtitle-based word frequencies.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 October 2018.
All research outputs
#6,382,382
of 22,681,577 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#9,349
of 29,399 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#46,214
of 180,345 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#112
of 240 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,681,577 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 29,399 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 180,345 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 240 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 51% of its contemporaries.
