Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 600 Turkish words from four age groups

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Understanding word acquisition is crucial for language development and cognitive processing.
• Establishing normative data across different age groups provides a baseline for research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create age-based subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for 600 Turkish words.
• To provide a reliable database for researchers investigating lexical and cognitive processing.

Main Methods:

• Collected AoA estimates on a 7-point scale from 115 children, 100 young adults, 115 middle-aged adults, and 127 older adults.
• Analyzed reliability using intraclass correlations and assessed correlations between age groups.
• Gathered supplementary data including word frequency, concreteness, imageability, and length measures.

Main Results:

• High reliability of AoA estimates was observed.
• AoA estimates were highly correlated across the four age groups.
• Children consistently provided earlier AoA estimates than all adult groups, irrespective of word frequency.

Conclusions:

• The generated norms offer a valuable resource for studying lexical processing and cognitive functions like autobiographical memory in Turkish speakers.
• The findings highlight developmental differences in subjective age of word acquisition.
• This database can facilitate cross-linguistic and developmental research on language acquisition.