The influence of age of acquisition and frequency of used words on a visual word recognition task.

Abstract

Low-literacy poses a significant problem in the Netherlands, with an anticipated increase to 3.5 million low-literate individuals in 2024. Low-literacy individuals encounter daily challenges in areas such as healthcare, education and work. Numerous low-literate individuals remain unidentified because of intimidating testing methods and provided help by others. Incomplete insights in the actual problem makes it challenging to provide solutions for low-literate individuals. Speech-to-text software can provide solutions to investigate the actual literate levels of individuals by examining word recognition based on audio signals. This provides a less intimidating research method since it examined how well the software converts speech to text, rather than the performance of the low-literate individual. In current research, word recognition is investigated by simulating speech-to-text software, while examining the factors contributing to word recognition; age of acquisition and frequency. Current study focuses on the question to what extent the performance on a visual word recognition task is dependent on age of acquisition and frequency of used words. Results supported the influence of age of acquisition and frequency of used words on the reaction time and error rates on a visual word recognition task. Furthermore, the effect of age of acquisition and frequency of used words is not significantly greater when having to reject the words in the visual word recognition task. Current study offers a more thorough understanding of word processing and its application in speech-to-text software for low-literate individuals.