Keywords
May 28, 2014
A large
vocabulary isn't required to
communicate adequately in a
language. For example, the
Voice of America, which
broadcasts worldwide, has programs presented in "
special English," a
subset of
English contained in about
1500 words.[1] This subset includes the words,
science,
physics,
chemistry,
biology,
engineer (but not
engineering), and
mathematics. We shouldn't be so amazed that
children learn language so quickly.
They say that
music is the
universal language, and that was proven by the popularity of the
Voice of America Jazz Hour, presented by its host,
Willis Conover, on the Voice of America. This program was beamed via
shortwave radio to
Eastern European jazz lovers starting in 1955 and continuing for many
decades. A major factor in the program's popularity was its use of special English, precisely
enunciated by Conover after its development in 1959.
We search by using
keywords, but often we require a key phrase. For example,
Pontiac, an
Ottawa Indian chief, had quite a few things named after him, notably an
automobile brand and a
city in Michigan. When I searched for him on
Google, using just "Pontiac," he was found on page four of the results. When I searched for "Pontiac Chief," his
Wikipedia entry was first in search items, followed by an
automobile, the
Pontiac Chieftain.
It's obvious that some words are more important to understanding than others, and these words are like keywords for our
memory.
Scientists from the
University of Kansas have demonstrated the existence of keywords in a
network of words in our memory. These keywords couple together groups of words.[2-3]
Their study, recently published in the
Journal of Memory and Language,[2] showed that individuals were able to recognize such keywords more quickly and accurately than selected "foil" words. The foil words were like the keywords in many respects, but they had a different position in a
network model of 20,000 similar-sounding English words. The network analysis was done using a
computer program called
KeyPlayer. The figure, below, shows a subset of this network in the region where the keyword, "
fish," holds together other words.[3]
The study had participants perform three conventional
psycholinguistic tasks, and they reacted more quickly and accurately to keywords than the foils, which were comparable to the keywords in several
lexical and network characteristics.[2] Just as in
communications networks, where removal of key
nodes will fracture the network into smaller networks, the keywords have the same function in memory tasks.
Says
University of Kansas psychology professor,
Michael Vitevitch,
"Our findings clearly show that there are words that hold key positions on the word network and that we process them more quickly and accurately than similar words that they hold together in our memory."[3]
There are potential applications of these findings. They can give insight into
language disorders and suggest possible treatments. People recovering from a
stroke might be taught to reconnect their memory through keywords, and keywords might be an aid in learning a second language, as the special English vocabulary has indicated.[3]
References:
- Voice of America - Learn American English with VOA Learning English.
- Michael S. Vitevitch and Rutherford Goldstein, "Keywords in the mental lexicon," Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 73 (May, 2014), pp. 131-147.
- Keywords hold vocabulary together in memory, University of Kansas Press Release, May 19, 2014.
