Accounting for the Concreteness and Neighborhood Effects in a High Frequency Word List for Poor Readers
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
First of all, I am glad to have read your study and to know about the work involved.
I think that the summary can be improved, it would be important to start with a more theoretical question and not directly with the objective.
The introduction and the more theoretical arguments on the issue seem to me to be comprehensive, well founded and correct. However, I would go deeper into the definition of "Concreteness and Neighbourhood", as they are central concepts that appear in the title.
Regarding point 2, materials and methods, it seems to me that it is well explained, detailing each step followed and separating it in an appropriate way into sections that facilitate understanding.
Regarding the results, I consider that the statistical analyses are appropriate, although it would be necessary to revise the italics of the significance level, p, at least in Spain we write it this way. The same applies to the punctuation, where commas should be replaced by full stops.
I consider that the tables and figures provide valuable and visual information for a better understanding of the explanation, although I see them too far apart, perhaps I would recommend using a smaller line spacing.
Regarding point 4, I think it is very well explained, it provides relevant and concrete information. However, there is no theoretical reference and I think this should be improved, as it is important to justify with previous references.
The conclusions seem to me to be scarce. It would be important to include limitations of the study in this section, as well as future lines.
The references are adequate in number and variety. In addition, more traditional references and older citations are used, as well as recent research, which enhances the quality.
Thank you very much and I hope these reviews can help.
Best wishes.
Author Response
COMMENT: First of all, I am glad to have read your study and to know about the work involved.
RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for the time taken to read our study and know about the work involved. Below we provide detailed responses along with reference to page numbers in the revised manuscript. The revised parts of the manuscript are also presented in red font for easy identification.
COMMENT: I think that the summary can be improved, it would be important to start with a more theoretical question and not directly with the objective.
RESPONSE: We agree that the summary should not start directly with the objective. Given the nature of this paper (tackling an existing gap of poor readers who do not respond well to literacy intervention), we propose that the summary should start with a problem statement instead of a theoretical question. The proposed revised summary starts with the following sentences:
“Some poor readers show little or no progress in literacy interventions as their susceptibility to the concreteness and neighborhood effect are not accounted for during intervention. This study aims to develop a resource for poor readers by revising the Dolch list to account for the concreteness and neighborhood (orthographic, phonological and semantic) effect.” (page 1)
COMMENT: The introduction and the more theoretical arguments on the issue seem to me to be comprehensive, well founded and correct. However, I would go deeper into the definition of "Concreteness and Neighbourhood", as they are central concepts that appear in the title.
RESPONSE: We are gratified to know that the reviewer finds the introduction and the more theoretical arguments to be ‘comprehensive’, ‘well founded’ and ‘correct’. We have provided a more in-depth definition of ‘concreteness’ and ‘neighborhood’ (page 2). Previously, ‘concreteness’ was defined as ‘degree of physical representation in reality’. ‘Neighborhood’ was defined as ‘words with orthographic [letter] /phonological/semantic [meaning] similarities’. We have since given a more in-depth explanation of these terms. At present, ‘concreteness’ is defined as ‘the inclination for words with more physical or tangible characteristics that can be experienced directly through the senses [e.g., dog, tree]’. ‘Neighborhood’ is defined as ‘other words that bear similarities to the base words via orthographic [letter], auditory or semantic [meaning] similarities’.
COMMENT: Regarding point 2, materials and methods, it seems to me that it is well explained, detailing each step followed and separating it in an appropriate way into sections that facilitate understanding.
RESPONSE: We are grateful that the reviewer found this section to be ‘well explained’ with each step to be detailed. We are also heartened that the steps are detailed and separated in an ‘appropriate way’ that facilitates understanding for the reviewer.
COMMENT: Regarding the results, I consider that the statistical analyses are appropriate, although it would be necessary to revise the italics of the significance level, p, at least in Spain we write it this way. The same applies to the punctuation, where commas should be replaced by full stops.
RESPONSE: We acknowledge that it is necessary to revise the italics of the significance level, p. We understand that the APA 7th edition states that letters used as statistical symbols or algebraic variables should be italicised. As such, we have italicised 4 ‘F’s, 16 ‘p’s, 12 ‘SD’s and 12 ‘M’s under the results section (page10).
COMMENT: I consider that the tables and figures provide valuable and visual information for a better understanding of the explanation, although I see them too far apart, perhaps I would recommend using a smaller line spacing.
RESPONSE: We appreciate that the tables and figures have provided the reviewer valuable and visual information for a better understanding of the explanation. We acknowledge that the tables have been placed too far apart. Previously, table 1 stretched between page 10 and 11. As such, six tables and two figures were spread across four pages – resulting in a reading experience that might could use improvements. We have compressed the headers for table 1 and ensured that the tables are featured across 2 pages instead. We have also reduced the spacing between tables 1 and 2, and tables 2 and 3. Currently, tables 1 to 3 are featured on page 11. Tables 4 to 6 are featured on page 12. Figures 1 and 2 remain on page 13. The six tables and two figures currently span across three pages for easier reference and an improved reading experience.
COMMENT: Regarding point 4, I think it is very well explained, it provides relevant and concrete information. However, there is no theoretical reference and I think this should be improved, as it is important to justify with previous references.
RESPONSE: We would like to reiterate our appreciation to the reviewer who found point 4 - the arguments and discussion of findings – to be ‘well explained’ with ‘relevant and concrete information’. We have included the theoretical references in the first two paragraphs of the discussion section on pages 13. The subsequent paragraphs revolve around the findings, limitations and proposed tips on ways to use the HFLN in the classroom or intervention setting (pages 14 and 15).
COMMENT: The conclusions seem to me to be scarce. It would be important to include limitations of the study in this section, as well as future lines.
RESPONSE: We have included the limitations and future lines in the conclusion. Taking into account the earlier comment (with regards to the avoidance of starting directly with the objective), we have also included the problem statement at the start of the conclusion. Currently, the summary reads as follows:
“Some poor readers show little or no progress in literacy intervention due to their susceptibility to the concreteness and neighborhood effect. The HFLN is a high frequency wordlist that is created to account for such susceptibility. Upon recategorizing the commonly used Dolch list according to concreteness, psycholinguistic techniques and databases were employed to include the associated orthographic, phonological and semantic neighbors of each word into the list. As compared to the Dolch list, the categories in the HFLN showed greater distinctiveness between categories with low and high concreteness values. There were some limitations faced during analysis. A larger sample size is required to validate the results of the ‘past verb’ category. In addition, 32 words were omitted due to lack of concreteness values for comparison. Regardless, the words that have been omitted in the analysis are retained in the HFLN. Alongside with the inclusion of the neighbors, the revised word list provides a more comprehensive high frequency word list for targeted intervention according to the type of susceptibility that poor readers demonstrate towards the concreteness and neighborhood effect. There were constraints in compiling the semantic neighbors for the HFLN from the database due to the extensive mental lexical variability among poor readers. Future research can focus on compiling the semantic references of different individuals to provide more targeted and relevant options of semantic neighbors in the HFLN.” (page 15)
COMMENT: The references are adequate in number and variety. In addition, more traditional references and older citations are used, as well as recent research, which enhances the quality.
RESPONSE: We are pleased that the reviewer has recognised the number, variety and quality of the references that are included in the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript describes a study that aimed at recategorizing the Dolch list using values for concreteness and neighborhood of words based on orthography, phonology and semantic. The authors describe in a well-written text how they applied standard psycholinguistics methods and several existing databases to obtain their additional categorical values. I support publication of the manuscript and would suggest some minor revisions.
At page 3 in the first paragraph the authors write that the word frequency effect refers to "longer reaction time incurred in response to words of high frequency as compared to low frequency due to the faster activation of a wider range of phonemic representations among high frequency words" -- I agree with the authors, however, I would suggest a bit of a rephrasing here. This argument only holds for words that have a certain amount of high frequency neighbors. If a word is of high frequency this per se does not mean that reaction times take longer - on the contrary. A high frequency word is recognized and produced faster compared to a low frequency word, if it contains only few high frequency neighbors. I would suggest stating more directly at this point that the high frequency effect that the authors refer to is specific for high frequency words with a lot of high frequency neighbors in the mental lexicon.
page 7: If it is possible, please state the size of HFLN, CLEARPOND and WordNet as well. This will give the readers a good impression of the size of these databases.
A minor point: The paper starts with the term "school going children". I'm more familiar with school-age children, but this is just a suggestion.
Author Response
COMMENT: The manuscript describes a study that aimed at recategorizing the Dolch list using values for concreteness and neighborhood of words based on orthography, phonology and semantic. The authors describe in a well-written text how they applied standard psycholinguistics methods and several existing databases to obtain their additional categorical values. I support publication of the manuscript and would suggest some minor revisions.
RESPONSE: We are heartened that the reviewer found the manuscript to be well written, and recognised that standard psycholinguistics methods and several existing databases were applied and accessed respectively to obtain the additional categorical values. We really appreciate the reviewer’s support for the publication of the manuscript. We are grateful for the opportunity to provide detailed responses below along with reference to page numbers in the revised manuscript. The revised parts of the manuscript are also presented in red font for easy identification.
COMMENT: At page 3 in the first paragraph the authors write that the word frequency effect refers to "longer reaction time incurred in response to words of high frequency as compared to low frequency due to the faster activation of a wider range of phonemic representations among high frequency words" -- I agree with the authors, however, I would suggest a bit of a rephrasing here. This argument only holds for words that have a certain amount of high frequency neighbors. If a word is of high frequency this per se does not mean that reaction times take longer - on the contrary. A high frequency word is recognized and produced faster compared to a low frequency word, if it contains only few high frequency neighbors. I would suggest stating more directly at this point that the high frequency effect that the authors refer to is specific for high frequency words with a lot of high frequency neighbors in the mental lexicon.
RESPONSE: We acknowledge that the rephrasing of the sentence is necessary for greater clarity. The aforementioned phrase has been modified into the following sentence -
“It refers to the longer reaction time incurred in response to words of high frequency - specifically with a number of high frequency neighbors - as compared to low frequency due to the faster activation of a wider range of phonemic representations among high frequency words.” (page 3)
COMMENT: page 7: If it is possible, please state the size of HFLN, CLEARPOND and WordNet as well. This will give the readers a good impression of the size of these databases.
RESPONSE: We have included the size of the aforementioned databases.
CLEARPOND
“CLEARPOND yields a corpus size of 27,751 English words.” (page 8)
WordNet
“The database contains 117 000 synsets.” (page 9)
HFLN
“The HFLN contains 220 base words, 762 orthographically similar words, 181 auditorily similar words and 114 semantically similar words.” (page 9)
COMMENT: A minor point: The paper starts with the term "school going children". I'm more familiar with school-age children, but this is just a suggestion.
RESPONSE: We have changed the term ‘school going children’ to ‘school-age children’ (page 1).
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
Thank you for taking into account the considerations made in revision 1. In addition, you have provided the revision in red color, being able to correctly identify the changes.
Practically all the recommendations have been taken into account (inclusion of theory, typographical issues, presentation of tables, definition of concepts, revision of the abstract...), so, for my part regarding the revision, I cannot indicate more.
Only if the journal considers revising the format of the bibliography, since in its template they appear in a different formulation (year in bold, different placement, authors separated by commas without the & sign...).
Thank you again for your confidence in my review.
Best wishes.
