Thesis (Ph. D.)--Westfälische Wilhelms-Universetät zu Münster, 1983. / List of acronyms: p. [166]-190. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-205).

This thesis examined the processes involved in reading and recognising acronyms (e.g. BBC, HIV, NATO). Normative values for frequency, age of acquisition, imageability, length, bigram and trigram frequency and orthographic neighbourhood size have been collected, and the influence of these factors on reading, recognition (Chapter 3) and word association responses (Chapter 4) has been assessed. Findings suggest that acronyms are integrated alongside words in the mental lexicon, and that meaning and phonology are particularly important in acronym processing. Chapter 5 extended these findings by investigating the performance of a patient with a specific deficit in semantic processing (semantic dementia). Some acronyms, specifically those which are pronounced by naming each letter in turn, were found to pose few problems for this patient even after her semantic system had been adversely affected by her disorder. Chapter 7 reported an event-related potential study of acronyms, with reference to the N170 and Recognition Potential components. The electrophysiological data supported the interpretation of acronyms as lexical, and particularly influenced by print to pronunciation factors. Findings of the thesis as a whole were discussed in relation to the Dual Route Cascaded model (Coltheart, Perry, Rastle, Langdon & Ziegler, 2001) and the Triangle model (Plaut, Seidenberg & Patterson, 1996). It was concluded that neither model could adequately accommodate acronym reading and recognition processes as they currently stand. Suggestions for amendments to word reading models were made. Potential future research directions are also discussed.

Acronyms, initialisms and other types of abbreviations are frequently used in scientific, academic, governmental and administrative setting to shorten lengthy terminology and nomenclature. While they can make a text easier to read for people familiar with the abbreviations, they can add to the text’s inherent difficulty and impede comprehension for those who are not familiar with their meaning. The phenomenon of acronym polynymy (multiple definitions associated with the same acronym) can create confusion and add to the cognitive load associated with understanding the text. The current practice of defining acronyms only once, when introduced can result in readers scrolling back and forth in the text looking for acronym definitions, increasing the cognitive load and negatively affect reading speed and content comprehension. The purpose of this research was to study if the presence of a large number of acronyms in a text impedes reading performance. The current study also investigated if providing easy access to acronym definitions via hover text would alleviate comprehension problems caused by unknown acronyms in the text. The hypothesis was that by enabling fast acronym disambiguation, and eliminating the need to scroll for acronym definitions, the hover functionality would enhance reading speed and content comprehension. The results of the experiment are analyzed and recommendations for future investigations of the acronym problem are formulated.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

This study is a research of the frequency of acronyms in an online forum and the meaning of the most frequent ones in their context. In the study, definitions are given for language forms used online so that one is able to compare a set of similarities and differences between these online varieties and the Standard English. The method consists of identifying and searching for a set of CMD-typical acronyms. These acronyms are taken from prior studies as well as from Crystal’s (2006:91f) list of known CMD-acronyms. The material is retrieved from an online forum of asynchronous communication, and the results show the frequency of the acronyms as well as discuss their meanings in context. The results indicate that acronyms are highly infrequent in asynchronous environments, and their use decreases from 2010 to 2013. The conclusion of this study is that the infrequency of acronyms in asynchronous environments may be due to the nature of asynchronous online communication, in which users have time to write their replies. When comparing this study’s corpora with studies on frequencies in synchronous environments, the acronym frequency in this study was lower than the frequency shown in the synchronous studies.

This paper assesses the relationship between Social Networking Sites (SNS) and the effect of its excessive use on a user’s spelling capabilities and academic performance by using a single-factor, multi-level between subjects design (One-way ANOVA). The One way Anova was applied to SNS use (independent variable) and spelling and academic performance (dependent variables). Furthermore, the independent variable consists of three levels, a few times a month or never, a few times a week and every day. Out of a possible 107 respondents a total of 56 respondents, distributed across the various groups, completed the test. A spelling test together with the academic records was used as an instrument to measure their spelling capabilities. The findings suggest that students that make excessive use of SNS performed worse in the spelling test than students that do not make use of SNS or make use of SNS a few times a month. In addition, it is established that the SNS use has no effect on spelling. Conclusions from this study are that social networking sites have many various impacts on the youth, some being positive and others negative. Although the end result was that SNS do not “significantly” affect your spelling capabilities it is suggested that further research be carried out on this topic on a larger and more representative sample. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted