Zortea, M., Menegola, B., Villavicencio, A. orcid.org/0000-0002-3731-9168 et al. (1 more author) (2014) Graph analysis of semantic word association among children, adults, and the elderly. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica / Psychology: Research and Review, 27 (1). pp. 90-99. ISSN 0102-7972
Abstract
This study used graph analysis to investigate how age differences modify the structure of semantic word association networks of children and adults and if the networks present a small-world structure and a scale-free distribution which are typical of natural languages. Three age groups of Brazilian Portuguese speakers (children, adults and elderly people) participated in the experiment. Quantitative and qualitative measures suggested that adults and elderly speakers have similar network structures. Children's network showed fewer nodes, connections and clusters, and longer inter-node distances. All networks presented a small-world structure, but they did not show entirely scale-free distributions. These results suggest that from childhood to adulthood, there is an increase not only in the number of words semantically linked to a target but also an increase in the connectivity of the network.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014 The Authors. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Graph theory; word association; developmental age groups; semantic memory |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Nov 2019 15:11 |
Last Modified: | 22 Nov 2019 03:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SciELO |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1590/S0102-79722014000100011 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:153552 |