Cumulative frequency and frequency trajectory norms as predictors of age of acquisition

The main objective of this paper was to characterise the new set of pictures (and related words) proposed by Bonin, Peereman, Malardier, Meot and Chalard (2003) in terms of cumulative frequency and frequency trajectory following the procedure used by Bonin, Barry, Meot and Chalard (2004) for Snodgrass and Vanderwart's (1980) pictures. Correlations and regression analyses show that cumulative frequency and frequency trajectory, were the main predictors of objective and rated age of acquisition (AoA). The comparison of the two pictures' sets reinforce the idea according to which these objective constructs, as they are simply deducted from adults (LEXIQUE) and children (MANULEX) word frequencies, are valid candidates to be used instead of lexical frequency and AoA. Therefore, their use enables to avoid the bias of the behavioural studies shown by Zevin and and Seidenberg (2002) linking to the choice of the word frequency and the use of AoA, which is a behavioral measure. In fact, cumulative frequency and frequency trajectory were not correlated. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in this paper.