The Effects of Frequency, Neighborhood Density and Number of Distractors on Alphabet Learning in an Adaptive Game
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2018-01-19
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en
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Abstract
An important part of language acquisition is alphabet learning. Another important part is acquiring the
words of a language. The moment a word is learned is called the age of acquisition, and can depend
on several factors such as the frequency that the word is heard, the length of the word, and how
familiar the word looks (orthography) or sounds (phonology) like already known words. In this thesis
I tried to find out if some of the factors that have an influence on word acquisition, also have an
influence on alphabet acquisition. I did this to find out how alphabet acquisition can be made more
effectively. To find out if the examined factors do have an effect, I used an educational game, the Bee
Letter Game from egoTeach, and adapted the game into different versions based upon the factors.
This game is used for letter learning, and the user has to distinguish the right letter (that is heard) from
distractors before a bee reaches that letter. The different adaptations of the game are based upon the
frequency of the occurrence of a letter, the neighborhood density and the number of distractors. Every
adaptation is tested by 8 adult participants and each one had to play through 100 letters. This
experiment did not find significant effects of frequency neighborhood density, nor the number of
distractors on players’ performance. However, because adult participants were used instead of
pre-schooled children for whom the game was meant, it is possible that the results are not
representative for children and therefore the absence of any effects in this experiment does not mean
that those factors do not have an effect.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen