How Colours in Online Dictionaries Affect Lookup Speed, Effectiveness and Information Retention

International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp.
27–61
doi:10.1093/ijl/ecu028 Advance access publication 26 January 2015 27
COLOURS IN ONLINE
DICTIONARIES: A CASE OF
FUNCTIONAL LABELS
Anna Dziemianko: Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan¤

(danna@wa.amu.edu.pl)
Abstract
The study attempts to determine if the colour of functional (part-of-speech and syntac-
tic) labels influences the speed and effectiveness of dictionary search for grammar as
well as the retention of the retrieved information. It also investigates whether the role of
colour is conditioned by the presence of examples in the microstructure. In an online
multiple choice test, participants consulted a purpose-built e-dictionary which consisted
of entries with and without examples. There were two dictionary versions. One
presented the entries in black and white. In the other, functional labels were in
colour. For each test item, the time of task completion was automatically recorded.
In the immediate retention test, the participants did the same task without access to any
dictionary. Results show that functional labels in colour significantly increase the speed
and effectiveness of online dictionary search. They also improve retention.
1. Introduction
Colours, still expensive in print, have become standard in electronic dictionaries,

including those online. They can be appreciated on all devices with colour dis-
plays, which are now commonplace. Dammann (1999: 201) points out that, in a
dictionary, “colour values!”. In various promotional materials, colours in dic-
tionaries are claimed to have great practical significance.1 They are believed to
increase entry clarity and speed up the search by helping users find the looked-
up words in the dictionary (mostly on paper) as well as the needed information
within entries (both on paper and screen). Apart from facilitating external and
internal access, colours have an aesthetic function – they usually look nice and
attractive. Some time ago, they were a sign of lexicographic innovation. It is
even stressed that “a supply of colourful dictionaries and reference books is an
essential part of the foreign language corner” (Gregory 2000: 89).
At the same time, specialists in interface design advise that colours in online
dictionaries be used sparingly and selectively, to highlight only important data
and maximize the clarity and legibility of the microstructure (Almind 2005: 39,
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28 Anna Dziemianko
53). By the same token, lexicographers are warned against overdoing colours,
as too much colour in a dictionary might be counterproductive.
In what follows, colours in electronic dictionaries are given more attention.
In Section 2, relevant research into the role of colours in visual search is re-
viewed and its significance for dictionary design and consultation is empha-
sized. The potential role of colours in electronic dictionaries is discussed from
the perspective of cognitive load hypothesis. Next, the section offers an over-
view of the use of colours in the major monolingual English learners’ diction-
aries online. Finally, the status of examples in electronic dictionaries is
revisited. Section 3 gives details of the study conducted to gain an insight
into the actual role of examples in online dictionary functional labels. The
obtained results are summarized in Section 4, and conclusions are drawn in
Section 5. Their significance in the context of other research is considered in
Sections 6, where the limitations of the experiment are also acknowledged. An
indication of further areas of investigation concludes the paper.
2. Literature review
2.1 Colours, dictionaries and related research
Empirical research in the field of computer science shows that colours increase
the visual salience of the information displayed on the computer screen and help
in visual search (Tamborello and Byrne 2007: 183). Fisher and Tan (1989)
observed that people estimate the relative cost of attending to highlighting or
disregarding it; they attend to highlighting if it is more predictive of item status.
In their series of experiments, participants had to find a target digit in the back-
ground of four distractor digits. Highlighting validity, or the probability that the
target is highlighted, was also manipulated. In experiment one, the target was
highlighted in (randomly selected) half of the cases, and a distractor – in the
other half of the time. In experiment two, the target was always highlighted (the
level of highlighting validity was 100 percent). It turned out that colour signifi-
cantly reduced search time when highlighting was 100 percent valid. When high-
lighting validity was 50 percent, search time in the colour condition proved to be
no shorter than when no highlighting was present (Fisher and Tan 1989: 20, 22).
In the replication of the study by Fisher and Tan (1989), Tamborello and Byrne
(2007) tested empirically relative costs of attending to highlighting at other levels
of highlighting validity. Nine highlighting validity conditions were introduced: 0,
12.5, 25, 37.5, 50, 62.5, 75, 87.5 and 100 percent. When highlighting validity was
set at 75 percent, for example, a participant received half control trials (no high-
lighting) and half highlighted trials (the target digit was highlighted in red), 75
percent of which had valid highlighting and 25 percent – invalid highlighting. It
was found that the subjects were the fastest on valid trials, then – control trials and
the slowest on invalid trials. Besides, increasing highlighting validity resulted in

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Enhancing Word Access in Chinese Dictionaries 29
significantly shorter response times on valid trials and longer response times on
invalid ones. Thus, the participants proved sensitive to highlighting, and the sen-
sitivity was higher at higher levels of validity.2 As the authors put it, “the effect of
validity on sensitivity is nearly linear: sensitivity increases as validity increases”
(Tamborello and Byrne 2007: 184).
One obvious conclusion which follows from the studies for dictionary design
is that it might be useful to highlight the relevant (i.e., looked-up)
information. Second, information not useful in a given situation should not
be highlighted in order to prevent distracting users, or reducing their sensitivity
to colour.
On the other hand, it is possible to argue that the microstructure is (still) quite
predictable and mostly static, so dictionary users, especially experienced ones,
could be expected to know where to find specific information, whether high-
lighted or not. Besides, it is typically linguistic information needed to solve a
specific linguistic problem that is looked for, not arbitrary targets. The orienting
of dictionary users’ attention must then be voluntary, which in the literature on
visual search is also known as internal, goal-directed, top-down or endogenous
(Posner 1980: 5, Jamet 2014: 47). Endogenous control over the locus of attention
suggests that observers focus on the regions or objects in the visual display that
they choose for further processing, bearing in mind their goals and assumption
about their current task (Yantis 1993: 676). However, it is worth pointing out
that the orienting of attention within a visual field can also be involuntary, or
exogenous (external), and result from stimuli related to the items displayed on
the screen, rather than any specific goal (Posner 1980: 5, Jamet 2014: 47). Such
stimulus-driven or bottom-up selection of information from visual displays
occurs when some properties of the stimulus capture attention independently
of the observer’s objectives and assumptions (Yantis 1993: 676). Importantly,
stimulus-driven selection must not be dismissed as irrelevant in the context of
dictionary use. The eye-tracking study by Tono (2011) reveals that when search-
ing for specific word senses, dictionary users are often lost in lexicographic data.
Some of the subjects’ search paths were surprisingly “complex” and “tangled”,
because “users moved their eyes all over the entry but could not find an answer”,
which implies that “even though users consult a dictionary, that does not auto-
matically mean that they bring back the right information with them” (Tono
2011: 149-150). Possibly, additional graphic highlighting could successfully pre-
vent them from getting lost in their goal-directed searches. Another eye-tracking
investigation into dictionary look-up shows that elements in bold do catch sig-
nificant attention of users searching for word senses in the microstructure (Lew
et al. 2013: 248, 253). Yantis (1993: 676) points out that it is in fact a combi-
nation of exogenous and endogenous control over the locus of attention that
determines how attention is ultimately deployed in the visual field. The recent eye
tracking research by Jamet (2014) suggests that deliberate, endogenous attention
orienting mechanisms are more often successfully adopted when supported by

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30 Anna Dziemianko
exogenous attention orienting mechanisms. In his study, participants in some

cases directed their gaze to relevant items presented on the computer screen even
before the elements were highlighted in red. What is important is that such
endogenous, top-down anticipatory strategies were more frequent when signal-
ling in colour was used, related to the exogenous orienting of attention.3 The
author suspects that guidance in colour “not only involves automatic attentional
capture processes, but can also encourage the emergence of endogenous orient-
ing strategies, providing the visual searching is sufficiently simple and the fol-
lowing items sufficiently easy to anticipate” (Jamet 2014: 52). This observation
might be of special relevance to lexicography, considering the quite predictable
structure of dictionary entries. Users, especially experienced ones, might delib-
erately (though not always successfully) search for information in specific loci of
lexicographic data in the entry, but this top-down process might possibly be
encouraged by additional bottom-up guiding mechanisms, such as highlighting
in colour.
It also needs to be borne in mind that entry clarity and speed of information
retrieval, i.e., ease of navigation and economy of effort (no need to click), are
greatly appreciated by e-dictionary users (Müller-Spitzer et al. 2012: 442).
Almind (2005: 39) points out that “[t]he speed and precision with which the
user retrieves data is the reason why even Internet dictionaries with sub-
standard content are successful . . . many excellent dictionaries are avoided
simply because they have cumbersome user interfaces . . . or display illegible
results.” It is thus vital to know whether colours influence search time and the
effectiveness of dictionary lookup. This question is relevant not only for static,
traditional and predictable microstructures. Electronic dictionaries open up the
possibility of developing dynamic and flexible interfaces, such as adaptable and
adaptive ones. In the former, the user sets his or her parameters or creates
profiles. In the latter, the dictionary itself observes and learns from the user so
as to adapt itself to specific user expectations (cf. Brusilovsky 2001, Atkins and
Rundell 2008, Müller-Spitzer 2008, Trap-Jensen 2010, Verlinde et al. 2010,
Rundell 2012, Dang et al. 2013). Designing both static and dynamic interfaces
requires decisions on display options. Those concerning colours might prove
essential; if colours in electronic dictionaries aid visual search, increase the
salience of dictionary information and reduce search time, they may be ex-
pected to affect extraneous cognitive load and retention.
Sweller et al. (1998) and Sweller (2010) distinguish three types of cognitive
load: intrinsic, germane and extraneous. Intrinsic cognitive load is the natural
complexity of information to be understood and learnt. It is unalterable, or
fixed for a given task and given learner knowledge levels. Germane cognitive
load refers to the working memory resources that the learner devotes to the
intrinsic complexity associated with the information to be learnt. Although
only learner characteristics are involved in germane loading, it cannot be con-
sciously controlled by the learner. Unlike germane cognitive load, which does

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not depend on how the information is presented, extraneous cognitive load

results from non-optimal instructional procedures and presentation.
Naturally, high intrinsic cognitive load and low extraneous loading mean
high germane cognitive load, because many working memory resources will
be involved in the essential matter to be learnt rather than any extraneous
issues resulting from non-optimal instruction or presentation (Sweller 2010:
126). Yet, “[a] combination of high intrinsic and high extraneous cognitive
load may be fatal to learning because working memory may be substantially
exceeded. Because intrinsic cognitive load cannot be altered, it may be essential
to design instruction in a manner that reduces extraneous cognitive load”
(Sweller et al. 1998: 263-264). In fact, cognitive load theory is focused on de-
veloping techniques to decrease extraneous loading (Sweller 2010: 124).
Obviously enough, if extraneous cognitive load is reduced, germane cognitive
load is increased and learning is improved, because working memory resources
are switched from extraneous cognitive load to elements associated with intrin-
sic cognitive load. On the other hand, if extraneous cognitive load is increased,
germane cognitive load is diminished and learning is inhibited, because the
learner is employing working memory resources to deal with the extraneous
load rather than the essential, intrinsic material to be learnt (Sweller 2010: 126).
There is evidence from the field of didactics that colours improve learning.
For example, Lambersky and Myers (1980) studied the usefulness of printed
learning materials on the human heart, and they had them in two versions:
colour and black and white. The use of the colour version resulted in more
effective learning than the black-and-white version, as evidenced by scores on
terminology, comprehension, identification or drawing tests. It may thus be
concluded that the colour in the learning materials reduced extraneous cogni-
tive load and increased germane cognitive load.
Dictionary search is considered to be related more to extraneous loading
than to germane loading (Liu and Lin 2011). Dictionary interfaces should be
designed so as to decrease extraneous cognitive load and involve an appropri-
ate level of germane cognitive load (Dang et al. 2013). Nonetheless, this is
easier said than done; as pointed out above, designers of dictionary interfaces
need to decide what to highlight and when (in what situation of dictionary use).
Besides, excessive highlighting may be misleading (Fisher and Tan 1989). As
Tamborello and Byrne (2007: 182) note, “it is not always easy for the designers
of visual interfaces to anticipate the particular target a user may be searching
for in a particular context, and it is not clear what the detriments of misleading
highlighting may be”.
To get an insight into how the major monolingual learners’ dictionaries
(MLDs) online currently use colours, screenshots of the entry for the word
professor are collated in Table 1.4
As can be seen, OALDCE8 and COBUILD7 give part of speech and
syntactic labels in blue, and in LDOCE5 syntactic labels are in green.

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32 Anna Dziemianko
Table 1: Entries for professor in MLDs online.
(continued)

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Table 1: Continued.

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34 Anna Dziemianko
Definitions are highlighted in violet in CALD4. MEDO, COBUILD7 and

MWALED use shades of blue to bring out examples. Blue regional and style
labels can be found in OALDCE8. In LDOCE5, the variety of English is
indicated in purple.5 In MEDO, COBUILD7, CALD4 and MWALED, red
icons direct users to specific information categories, such as pronunciation,
frequency or thesaurus entries. In CALD4, the icon which enables users to
access American pronunciation is in blue. Cross-references are given in blue
in OALDCE8 and LDOCE5, with that in the former dictionary, indicators
(markers) in explicit cross-references (Bergenholtz and Tarp 1995: 216, Svensén
2009: 390), here the words compare, are in dark red. Wherever they appear,
widgets are in various colours. Interestingly, LDOCE5 is the only dictionary
which gives sense numbers in colour (carmine), and highlights collocations in
blue before examples. Text boxes clearly stand out in OALDCE8 and
LDOCE5. In the former, relevant information is shown on a beige background,
and in the latter, the background is pink. The background against which head-
words appear is highlighted in turquoise in MWALED, ice-blue in
COBUILD7 and blue in LDOCE5. The headwords themselves are in dark
red in OALDCE8 and MEDO. A green arrow in LDOCE5 directs users to
the related semantic category (here: college), printed in red. Clicking college
takes the user to a colourful display of words in this semantic field, the screen-
shot of which is shown for convenience in Table 1 as well.
Even this cursory overview of the use of colours in one entry in the major
MLDs shows that different dictionaries use different colours to highlight dif-
ferent information categories. Their selection seems to be arbitrary and intui-
tive.6 Besides, little is known about the actual usefulness of colours. Some
researchers claim that they are helpful, and assert that “used prudently, colours
can make a world of difference to the user” (Almind 2005: 52). Others, how-
ever, remain more sceptical and point out that “we are lacking evidence at the
moment to demonstrate that colour illustrations are any more effective than
the more traditional simple iconic line drawings” (Lew 2010: 299). In the ab-
sence of published empirical research into the actual usefulness of colours in
(electronic) learners’ dictionaries for language reception, production or reten-
tion, any seemingly definitive statements can only be seen as hypotheses.
It is worth noting, though, that there is research into a related aspect of
dictionary interface design. In two studies, Nesi (2011) investigated the role
of fonts in electronic dictionaries on vocabulary retention. The aim was to see
whether a disfluent font, slightly more difficult to read, affected retention. The
assumption was that the effort invested in reading the disfluent font during
dictionary consultation could result in better retention than the fluent condi-
tion. In the first study, entries for five words, each in a different font, were
shown to 96 participants. One of the fonts, Arial, was the fluent condition and
the others represented disfluent conditions (Arial Black, Comic Sans MS grey-
scale, Impact, Impact italics). Quite surprisingly, the effect of font fluency was

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not clear; in the fluent condition (Arial) and one disfluent condition (Comic
Sans MS greyscale) retention was significantly better than in other two disflu-
ent conditions (Impact, Impact italics). Nonetheless, what could have affected
the results was not so much the font itself as the fact that any font stood out
from the other fonts which each subject saw in the test. In the second study by
Nesi (2011), in which only 36 participants were involved, five fonts were used in
entries for a different set of five words, but the font conditions were not
rotated; each participant had access to entries in only one font. Again, Arial
was the fluent condition, and the other fonts represented disfluent conditions
(Arial Black, Comic Sans MS greyscale, Impact, Bradley Hand). The results
show that retention was the best for two disfluent fonts (Arial Black and
Bradley Hand), with the difference between them nearing significance
(p=0.08). Yet, the worst results were obtained in another disfluent condition
(Impact), and not the easiest-to-read fluent condition. It is important to note,
however, that the retention task was open-ended; the participants were even
allowed to draw pictures, which made retention difficult to evaluate. The re-
sults should be treated with caution also because there were really few subjects
in each condition and they knew the names of the fonts, among which there
were words like comic or hand. This could have affected their attitudes and
performance. Most importantly, however, the distinction between the fluent
and disfluent conditions might not be clear enough in the first place, since
many typographic features different across the fonts (like spacing, ligatures,
swashes, pitch or size) could have influenced the results. Such features were not
controlled in either study.
2.2 Examples in learners’ dictionaries
Examples have long been recognized as an integral element of dictionary

entries, especially polysemous ones (Zgusta 1971: 511, Gouws 1989: 131,
Prinsloo 2013: 511). In learners’ dictionaries, examples are even said to be
more valuable than definitions and grammatical indicators (Kirkpatrick
1985: 11, Bogaards 1996: 309). They are often read before definitions
(COBUILD2: xxii) and consulted more willingly than syntactic codes
(Béjoint 1981: 219, Bogaards and Van der Kloot 2002, Dziemianko 2006,
2012). Examples are considered useful in decoding, as they help dictionary
users understand meaning and distinguish between related meanings, as well
as in encoding, because they show the grammatical properties of headwords
and help learners construct their own sentences (Fox 1987: 137, Cowie 1989:
57). It might seem natural, then, that the value of examples in EFL dictionaries
is claimed to be enormous (Rundell and Kilgarriff 2011: 276, Yamada 2013:
204). Yet, evidence for their actual usefulness is limited, fragmentary and in-
conclusive. To check the usefulness of examples for understanding difficult
words, Summers (1988) conducted a multiple-choice comprehension test

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36 Anna Dziemianko
based on a reading passage. The comprehension test was followed by a pro-

duction task in which the subjects were requested to formulate sentences with
selected difficult words. The dictionary conditions included: definition only,
examples only, definitions with examples. Summers (1988) found no statistic-
ally significant differences between the three conditions in either task; reference
to examples (with and without definitions) did not result in significantly better
reception or production scores than reliance on definitions alone. Similar dic-
tionary conditions were tested by Laufer (1993), who asked her subjects to
translate 18 difficult English words into their native language (Hebrew) and
formulate sentences with them. In the comprehension test, definitions with
examples helped the subjects the most, followed by slightly less effective def-
initions alone and examples alone. In the production test, definitions with
examples were also the most useful, but there were no statistically significant
differences between the definitions-only or examples-only conditions. No sig-
nificant role of examples in encoding was found by Nesi (1996). In her study,
example sentences had been removed from half of the LDOCE entries given to
her subjects, who were asked to formulate sentences with selected difficult
words. No supporting effect of examples on comprehension, in turn, was
noted by Al-Ajmi (2008). Half of his subjects consulted definitions with ex-
amples and the other half – only definitions. In fact, examples proved to exert a
negative effect on comprehension, checked here in a translation task. More
recently, Frankenberg-Garcia (2012) conducted an experiment in which her
subjects consulted definitions, single examples and example trios (sets of
three examples for one headword). In the multiple-choice comprehension
task, they had to select the best translations of target words into Portuguese.
Frankenberg-Garcia (2012) found definitions more helpful in the comprehen-
sion of new words than isolated examples. Only three examples of a word given
at a time proved to be as helpful as a definition. By contrast, in a production
errors test, where the subjects were expected to correct grammar errors, single
examples and three-example sets were more effective than definitions. It should
be noted, however, that in this study examples were not extracted from a
learners’ dictionary; the author hand-picked examples suitable for the specific
decoding and encoding tasks from three corpora. In the replication study by
Frankenberg-Garcia (2014), the comprehension test yielded similar results;
definitions helped in comprehension more than single examples, but example
trios were as useful as definitions. Neither definitions nor single corpus ex-
amples significantly facilitated encoding, operationalized now in a sentence
formulation task; only multiple examples were considerably more helpful
than definitions. Like in the 2012 study, examples carefully selected from cor-
pora by the author were employed in the investigation.
In the past, there was a lot of debate about the origin of examples in learners’
dictionaries, with the views that examples should be invented by lexicographers
and harvested from corpora without any modification at opposite poles

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(e.g., Laufer 1992, Minaeva 1992, Sinclair 1984, 1991, Fox 1987, Landau 2001).
Today, examples in learners’ dictionaries are mostly corpus-based (Potter 1998,
Prinsloo and Gouws 2000, Atkins and Rundell 2008, Prinsloo 2013, Yamada
2013), and the debate itself is considered an ill-funded “ideological struggle
resulting in loss of perspective” (Prinsloo 2013: 511). The process of finding
candidates for examples is largely automated and much easier than it was a few
decades ago (cf. Engelberg et al. 2009, Kilgarriff 2013). Furthermore, in elec-
tronic dictionaries, storage space ceases to be an issue, and lexicographers can
include more examples than in dictionaries on paper, largely constrained for
space (Rundell and Kilgarriff 2011: 276). This is especially true for the elec-
tronic dictionaries which explore the medium more fully than those which are
simply retro-digitized versions of paper dictionaries (c.f. Tono 2009), also
known as printed online dictionaries (Fuertes-Oliviera 2013: 326) or copycats
(Tarp: 2011: 58-60).
Access to richer stores of data in electronic dictionaries, including additional
examples or even a featured text corpus (cf. Varantola 1994, Atkins 1996), is
dictated by the need to satisfy communicative and cognitive needs of dictionary
users. The former include text reception and production, while the latter in-
volve acquiring knowledge in general (Bergenholtz and Johnsen 2013: 562).
Enriching electronic dictionaries with access to corpora is also perfectly in
line with data-driven learning (Johns 1991a, 1991b), which involves the use
of corpus data to figure out the meaning and usage of words. Put differently,
exposure to real language encourages learners to test hypotheses about word
meaning and use. Learners become language detectives, because ready solu-
tions are not offered to them, only data which need to be further analysed
(Flowerdew 2009: 339). O’Sullivan (2007: 277) argues that data-driven learning
enhances “predicting, observing, noticing, thinking, reasoning, analysing, in-
terpreting, reflecting, exploring, making inferences (inductively or deductively),
focusing, guessing, comparing, differentiating, theorising, hypothesising, and
verifying.” Importantly, drawing conclusions concerning language makes lan-
guage facts more likely to be remembered (Kilgarriff 2009). Landure and
Boulton (2010) found that corpus consultation in conjunction with other
tools (dictionaries and translation engines) resulted in better written language
production and improved learner autonomy. This is an important conclusion,
since corpus-based examples conventionally supplied in dictionary entries “are
not necessarily geared to language production errors and certainly do not pro-
vide repeated exposure to specific target structures that can be problematic to
learners with a specific mother tongue background” (Frankenberg-Garcia
2012: 287).
Initially, a CD-ROM which contained a corpus was made available to users of
a specific dictionary, e.g., COBUILD.7 However, there was usually no (pre)fil-
tering done, and users willing to draw on the extra resource had to work like
would-be corpus linguists (Bogaards 2013: 410, Frankenberg-Garcia 2014: 142).

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38 Anna Dziemianko
It is difficult to disagree with Kilgarriff (2009) that “most learners do not want to
be corpus linguists, and concordances are unfamiliar and difficult objects”.
Nowadays, links to corpora and customized tools for exploring corpus data
can be accessed from many online dictionaries (Müller-Spitzer 2013: 378). It is
stressed that since the data are to be explored by non-linguists, “lexicographers
should weigh the ease of hypertextual access against the descriptive objective
underlying the dictionary, and . . . the situation in which the user needs such extra
data” (Debus-Gregor and Heid 2013: 1011). To avoid overloading the user with
irrelevant examples, Abel (2013: 1123) stresses the role of intelligent dictionary
integration with outer sources, including corpora. Possible features of such in-
telligent integration include word sense disambiguation to allow users to search
for examples of words in specific senses, or pre-selecting good examples with the
help of specialized software, such as GDEX (Kilgarriff et al. 2008, Rundell and
Kilgarriff 2011; cf. Kosem et al. 2013). Frankenberg-Garcia (2012: 289) suggests
providing hyperlinks to different examples for decoding and encoding purposes.
Such methods of intelligent dictionary integration with external data are likely to
prevent a “suffocation effect”, when all potentially relevant information is dis-
played, rather than what is really needed in a specific situation (Fuertes-Oliviera
2013: 335, cf. Bergenholtz and Johnsen 2013: 561). “Less is more” (Fuertes-
Oliviera 2013: 335) appears then to be a better approach in this respect than
“the more the merrier” (Debus-Gregor and Heid 2013: 1003).
It is also recommended that e-microstructures should be dynamic and cus-
tomizable (Engelberg et al. 2009). Hierarchical arrangement of lexicographic
data, flexible presentation modes and highlighting search results can success-
fully prevent dictionary users from getting lost in the vast amount of poten-
tially relevant information (Yamada 2013: 204-206, cf. Lew and Tokarek 2010).
Clickable more buttons are among the efficiency-oriented devices which make
it possible to get access to more information on demand and ensure that the
presentation of lexicographic data is compact when users do not need extra
information (Debus-Gregor and Heid 2013: 1005). See more and see less but-
tons can be found in MEDO. Clicking the latter, the user hides labels for
syntactic subcategories, phonetic transcription, links to word forms, colloca-
tions and examples. It is also worth noting that the dictionary adopts a dual
track approach, in which productive vocabulary is exemplified, but receptive
entries (for much less frequent words unlikely to be used productively) do not
include examples at all (cf. Bogaards 2003: 50, Dziemianko 2006: 24–25).
Naturally, the idea is to limit to a minimum the amount of data necessary to
solve a given punctual information deficit, assumed here to be of a receptive
nature. Example sentences with receptive words cannot be called up even by
clicking See more. It is important to note that other learners’ dictionaries, also
those which do not adopt the dual-track principle and do not include effi-
ciency-oriented tools similar to see more/less, have been found not to exemplify
all headwords (and their senses); CALD2 does not offer examples in 13 percent

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of the items included, LDOCE4 and MEDAL2 leave out examples in over 25
percent of the cases (Bogaards 2013: 404). Recently, Ostermann (2014), having
analysed the coverage of headwords in example sentences in the Big Five, has
called it “random” and “far from systematic”.
Overall, it seems that examples gradually cease to be a default and static
feature of dictionary entries. The increasing awareness of fine-grained control
over the amount of information available to a dictionary user sometimes jus-
tifies excluding examples from specific entries for good, or making them avail-
able on demand to address users’ needs more adequately. This seems to be a
reasonable approach not only considering reference needs and the data-driven
approach to learning, but also discrepant research results, which do not pro-
vide compelling or conclusive evidence for the actual usefulness of examples.
3. Methods
3.1 Research aims
The aim of the present paper is to investigate the influence of functional labels
in colour on search time, the effectiveness of dictionary use and retention.
Functional labels are understood here as part-of-speech and syntactic labels
after Burkhanov (1998: 89).
The study attempts to answer the following research questions:
(1) Does the presence of colour in functional labels affect the speed and
effectiveness of online dictionary search for grammatical information?
(2) Do functional labels in colour help users remember the retrieved gram-
matical information?
(3) Is the role of colour, if any, moderated by entry completeness? More specif-
ically, does the effect of functional labels in colour on search time, informa-
tion retrieval and retention depend on the presence of examples in entries?
3.2 Materials
To achieve the aims of the study, an experiment was conducted in which a ques-
tionnaire, a main test and a post-test were employed. All the materials were de-
signed using the Moodle platform and were available online. The questionnaire
made it possible to profile the subjects, control for colour blindness and acquaint
participants with the functionalities of the experimental tool. The main test was
designed to examine the role of colours in online dictionary labels, and retention
was checked with the help of the post-test immediately after the main test.
In the main test, 18 English words, six nouns, six verbs and six adjectives,
were used in sentences drawn from corpora (mainly COCA). The target words

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40 Anna Dziemianko
together with their immediate context had been removed from the corpus sen-
tences and their grammatical properties were manipulated in multiple-choice
questions. The subjects were requested to choose one of the four options given
for each target word which could best complete the sentence. To perform the
task, the participants were asked to consult the entries supplied below each
sentence. The entries were compiled specifically for the purpose of the study on
the basis of the information found in the Big Five. To make sure that the
subjects relied on the mini-dictionaries and not on their background lexical
and syntactic knowledge, the originally selected target words, which were al-
ready infrequent, were replaced by even rarer ones. The substitutes were drawn
from online dictionaries of difficult words in English (The Phrontistery and The
Grandiloquent Dictionary), and represented the same parts of speech as the
originally chosen words. Table 2 gives the words together with the substitutes
eventually used in the study (in brackets).
In the test, the sequence of the items was randomized to prevent learning
effects. The system automatically shuffled the sentences (with the accompany-
ing entries) each time the test was attempted.
The manipulation of the grammatical properties of headwords in multiple
choice questions depended on the grammatical description offered in the sup-
plied entries. Distractors illustrated those features which were not represented
in the entries, and could not be justified by entry consultation. In general, the
manipulations concerned noun countability, verb transitivity and adjective pre-
dicative or attributive uses. For example, a noun described in the entry as
countable was shown as an uncountable one, an intransitive verb was repre-
sented as a transitive one, and an adjective which is only attributive functioned
as a predicative one or, much less often – as a noun or verb from which an
adjective is formed by relevant suffixation. Apart from the distractors, there
was always only one option in each multiple choice question which represented
the same grammatical properties of a given target item as its entry. A more
detailed account of manipulations in multiple choice questions is given in
Table 3, with examples of correct and incorrect options (distractors) in italics.
Table 2: Test items: Originally selected words (with substitutes).
Nouns Verbs Adjectives
cynosure (joola) glad-hand (ted) thunderstruck (elapid)

hustle (tath) motor (couther) extenuating (brumal)
skein (rach) spread (jow) forensic (crinal)
point (skeg) burgeon (fub) afloat (gressible)
rip-off (brach) scud (ret) cardinal (arval)
sweep (cleg) zoom (nim) countervailing (geal)

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The entries used in the study were of two types: minimalistic and complete.
A minimalistic entry consisted of the headword, its phonetic transcription,
part-of-speech, syntactic and style labels as well as a definition. In a complete
entry, there was also an example of usage.
The gapped sentences used in the test and the example sentences employed in
complete entries were selected very carefully. They had to flesh out the head-
word properties which were shown in functional labels. After all, examples in
complete entries had to be a reliable source of grammatical information and
help participants choose correct answers in the multiple choice task. When
corpora were searched, candidates for gapped sentences and examples met
the same query criteria. In the entry for the adjective brumal (extenuating),
which had the label [only before noun], the following example was given:
(1) It’s important to consider brumal factors.
It was based on the sentence extracted from COCA:
(2) Kulah says, it’s important to consider extenuating factors.
Among the hits for the same query, extenuating + noun, there was the fol-
lowing sentence:
(3) We seek extenuating evidence, not irrelevant illustration.
It served as a basis for the gapped sentence, which, when correctly filled in
the multiple-choice task, should read:
(4) We seek brumal evidence, not irrelevant illustration.
A similar strategy of harvesting sentences was followed in each case, and the
grammatical properties of a given lexical item shown in the label were always
the guiding principle. Apart from that, attention was paid to sentence length
and internal complexity. Excessive length of both dictionary examples and
gapped sentences was avoided, and corpus sentences were edited for difficult
words. In few cases, examples were drawn from monolingual learners’ diction-
aries. Even then the examples (and corpus candidates for gapped sentences)
were checked against relevant functional labels to make sure that they repre-
sented the same grammatical characteristics of a given headword. In fact, this
approach prevented accepting any dictionary example at face value. To illus-
trate, the following example form LDOCE5:
(5) the burgeoning market for digital cameras
could not be used to illustrate the intransitive verb fub (burgeon) [intransi-
tive]. The form burgeoning in the example above is used attributively and per-
forms the function of an adjective pre-modifying a noun, and not that of an

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42 Anna Dziemianko
Table 3: Manipulations in multiple choice questions.
Functional Correct option in mul- Incorrect options in multiple

labels in entries tiple choice questions choice questions
noun no article before the the noun shown as countable;

uncountable noun phrase the indefinite article before the
–smaller skeg noun or the noun in the plural
–smaller skegs
–a smaller skeg
–smaller skegs’
noun countable the indefinite article the noun shown as uncountable; no
before the noun article before the noun phrase
phrase or the noun –admirable joola
in the plural –joola
–an admired joola –admired joola
verb intransitive intransitive always + transitive (active or passive) and
always + adverb/preposition /or intransitive without
adverb/ –nimmed around adverb/preposition
preposition Europe –nimmed Europe
–nimmed
–were nimmed
verb intransitive intransitive transitive (active or passive) and/or
–fub intransitive + adverb/preposition
–be fubbed
–fub schools
–fub away schools
adjective only the adjective before a the adjective without an accom-
before noun noun panying noun; the adjective
–an arval principle of after a noun
–arval in
–the most arval for
–a principle arval of
adjective not the adjective after a the adjective before a noun or as
before noun verb a noun; the adjective after the
–residents were elapid verb but with a verbal or
and. . . nominal suffix
–elapid residents
–elapids
–residents were elapided and

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intransitive verb. Even more importantly, this deverbal adjective does not give
clear information on the transitivity of the verb from which it is derived; pre-
sent participles of transitive verbs can also be used attributively, e.g., an irritat-
ing habit. It follows that sentence 5 could not help subjects realize that the
headword fub (burgeon) was intransitive. Similarly, the OALDCE8 example of
sweep (n):
(6) the broad sweep of white cliffs around the bay
was considered inadequate to illustrate the noun cleg (sweep), labelled as

[countable] in the experiment. The definite article before the noun in the sin-
gular does not unequivocally indicate that the noun is countable, because the
can also precede uncountable nouns. Clearly then, not all dictionary examples
qualified as good examples for the purposes of the experiment. Both potential
examples and gapped sentences had to me checked against the information in
labels to make sure that they illustrated the target grammatical features.8
Overall, the information necessary to answer the multiple-choice questions
could be found in functional labels in both entry types, and in complete entries
– also in examples of usage. The two entry categories (complete and minima-
listic) were included for two reasons. First, they helped to imitate the solutions
adopted in MEDO and other learners’ dictionaries, where entries for relatively
infrequent words are not shown in examples (see Section 2.2). Second, they
made it possible to see if the role of colours, if any, depended on examples.
The structure of the main test is shown in Figure 1.9
Two test versions were compiled. In one, labels were given in colour, in the
other – they were in black and white. In each test version, nine entries were
complete and the other nine were minimalistic. There were three complete
entries and three minimalistic ones for each part of speech in a test.
Importantly, each subject was randomly assigned to one test version.
In the colour version, part-of-speech, syntactic and style labels were all given
in colour. The colours used in labels were taken from the web-safe palette of
colours; green (#00CC00) for parts of speech, blue (#0000FF) for syntax and
dark red (#CC0000) for style. Style labels were shown in colour even though
they did not convey information relevant to the task at hand. Nonetheless,
their colour helped to imitate the solutions adopted in MLDs (especially
LDOCE5), and was expected to reduce the salience of functional labels,
which could have been too conspicuous otherwise. It thus made it possible
to avoid the situation where only target (relevant) information is highlighted
(100 percent highlighting validity, cf. Fisher and Tan 1989).
Overall, two factors were taken into consideration: interface and entry type.
Each of them had two levels; the interface was colour or black and white,
entries were either complete or minimalistic. Interface was a between groups
factor, because the subjects were randomly assigned to work under one

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44 Anna Dziemianko
Figure 1: Main test versions.
interface condition. Entry was a within-subject (repeated measures) factor,

since each subject dealt with both entry types in equal measure.
3.3 Subjects and procedures
There were 219 participants in the study, all of whom were doing degrees in the
Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland (B2-C1
in CEFR). 113 of them were given the colour version of the test, and the other
106 were assigned to the black and white version.
In the experimental session, the subjects were first allotted five minutes to fill out
the questionnaire. Then, they were requested to take the main test and answer
all the multiple choice questions, but there was no time limit to perform the task.
In the test, time spent on answering each question was registered by the Moodle
logging facility, so that there were exact timestamps for each test item.
Immediately after the main test, the subjects were asked to take the retention
test, in which they answered the same questions as in the main test, but without
access to any dictionary entries. Additionally, the sequence of test items and the
order of options in multiple choice questions were changed in the retention test to
reduce learning effects. The participants had 15 minutes to complete the post-test.
4. Results
4.1 Time
Figure 2 shows the mean time needed to do the main test in the two experi-
mental conditions (colour and black and white).

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1200
1000
1003
800
Seconds
792
600 Black and white
400 Color
200
0
Interface
Figure 2: Mean time of test completion by interface.
In the black and white condition, the subjects needed 16 minutes 43 seconds
to find the relevant information on the headwords, and in the colour condition
– 13 minutes 12 seconds. The difference of 3 minutes 31 seconds in favour of
the colour condition was statistically highly significant (t = 8.88, p = 0.00**),
and the effect size was large (Cohen’s d = 1.19), which means that there was
about 62 percent of non-overlap between the two interfaces in the distribution
of time needed to do the test. It is also worth noting that there was greater
variability in the time needed to find the right information in the black and
white condition (SD 193 sec. = 3 min 13 sec.) than in the colour condition (SD
159 sec. = 2 min 39 sec.).
Figures 3 and 4 present the mean time spent on dealing with a test item
depending on test version (interface) and entry type, respectively. Unless clearly
stated otherwise, 2-level between-group 2-level within-subject ANOVA re-
sults are discussed in Section 4.
Figure 3 shows that the search for grammatical information on a test item
was on average 12 seconds faster when labels were in colour than when they
were in black and white. The difference between the two interfaces was statis-
tically significant (F(1,16) = 8.84, p = 0.01*; partial eta2=0.356). As can be
seen from Figure 4, in turn, the search for grammatical information on a
single item was on average four seconds faster when there were no examples
in entries. In other words, examples slowed down the search by four seconds
per test item. This effect was not statistically significant (F(1,16) = 1.96,
p = 0.18; partial eta2=0.109).
Figure 5 gives information on mean search time for grammatical information
on a test item in each interface and entry condition.
When working with minimalistic and complete entries, the subjects needed
less time to perform the search when labels were in colour. The difference
between the two interfaces was similar for each entry condition (for complete
entries: 13.63 seconds, for minimalistic entries: 9.78 seconds). The interaction
between entry and interface had no statistical significance (F(1,16) = 0.46,
p = 0.51; partial eta2=0.023). It is also worth noting that there was no

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46 Anna Dziemianko
70
60 55.72
50 44.02
Seconds
40
30
20
10
0
Black and white Color
Interface
Figure 3: Mean time (for a test item): Interface.
70
60 51.85
47.89
50
Seconds
40
30
20
10
0
Complete Minimalisc
Entry
Figure 4: Mean time (for a test item): Entry.
Black and white interface Color interface

70
58.67
60 52.78
50 45.04 43.00
Seconds
40
30
20
10
0
Complete Minimalisc
Entry
Figure 5: Mean time (for a test item): Entry x Interface.
statistically significant difference between the two entry conditions in the time
needed to find information on a test item in the colour interface. In other
words, when labels were in colour, the subjects spent almost the same time
extracting grammatical information from minimalistic (43 seconds) and com-
plete entries (45.04 seconds).

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100
82.55
Mean percentages
80 66.69
60
40
20
0
Interface
Figure 6: Main test results: Interface.
100
75.29 73.95
Mean percentages
80
60
40
20
0
Complete Minimalisc
Entry
Figure 7: Main test results: Entry.

100
82.69 82.40
Mean percentages
80 67.89 65.49
60
40
20
0
Complete Minimalisc
Entry
Figure 8: Main test results: Entry x Interface.
4.2 Main test results
Figures 6 and 7 present the results obtained in the main test in each test version
and entry condition, respectively.

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48 Anna Dziemianko
As can be seen, around 83 percent of the subjects’ answers were correct when
labels were in colour, and only about 67 percent were correct when labels were
in black and white (Figure 6). The difference of almost 24 percent (82.55*100/
66.69 = 123.78) is statistically significant and the effect size is large; nearly 40
percent of the between groups variance can be explained by the manipulated
interface (F(1,16) = 10.42, p = 0.01*; partial eta2 = 0.395). However, the sub-
jects supplied comparably many correct answers when minimalistic (74 percent)
and complete entries (75 percent) were used (Figure 7). The difference of less
than two percent (75.29*100/73.95 = 101.81) between the two entry conditions
is not statistically significant and accounts for only about one percent of the
within subject variance (F(1,16) = 0.13, p = 0.72; partial eta2 = 0.008).
Data on main test results obtained in each entry condition in both test ver-
sions are presented in Figure 8.
Irrespective of whether the subjects were using complete or minimalistic
entries, there were always about a quarter more correct answers in the
colour condition than in the black and white condition (complete entries:
82.69*100/67.89 = 121.80; minimalistic entries: 82.40*100/65.49 = 125.81).
The interaction effect between entry and interface has no statistical significance
(F(1,16) = 0.08, p = 0.78; partial eta2 = 0.005).
4.3 Retention
Retention results in the two test versions and entry conditions are presented in
Figures 9 and 10, respectively.
As can be seen from Figure 9, retention was 29 percent (63.13*100/
49.11 = 128.55) better when in the main test labels had been in colour; in the
colour condition, over 63 percent of the successfully retrieved grammatical
information was retained, while in the black and white condition – about
half. The interface significantly affected the retention of grammar
(F(1,16) = 8.26, p = 0.01*; partial eta2 = 0.340). Figure 10 shows, in turn,
that retention was 11 percent better when the subjects had seen examples in
entries (59.06*100/53.17 = 111.08). In other words, examples enhanced remem-
bering the retrieved grammatical information by 11 percent; retention slightly
exceeded 59 percent when complete entries were used and 53 percent when
minimalistic entries were consulted. The effect of entry type on retention was
not statistically significant (F(1,16) = 1.93, p = 0.18, partial eta2 = 0.108).
Figure 11 presents the results of the retention test when both entry and
interface conditions are taken into account.
Comparable differences in retention (of 25-32 percent) in favour of the
colour interface were observed when the students had been using complete
and minimalistic entries (complete entries: 65.68*100/52.44 = 125.24; minima-
listic entries: 60.57*100/45.78 = 132.31). The effect of colour clearly did not
depend on entry type (F(1,16) = 0.03, p = 0.86; partial eta2 = 0.002).

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100
Mean percentages
80
63.13
60 49.11
40
20
0
Interface
Figure 9: Retention test results: Interface.
100
Mean percentages
80
59.06
60 53.17
40
20
0
Complete Minimalisc
Entry
Figure 10: Retention test results: Entry.

100
Mean percentages
80
65.68
60.57
60 52.44
45.78
40
20
0
Complete Minimalisc
Entry
Figure 11: Retention test results: Entry x Interface.
5. Conclusions
The results of the study show that labels in colour reduce the time of dictionary
lookup for grammatical information, make the search more successful and help
users remember the retrieved grammatical information (cf. research questions 1

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50 Anna Dziemianko
and 2). Arguably, then, colours increase germane cognitive load and reduce
extraneous cognitive load, which should be assessed positively. Unfortunately,
the same does not hold for examples. Unlike colours, examples do not speed up
the search for grammatical information in entries. They do not increase the
effectiveness of dictionary consultation, either, and, most surprisingly, do not
help users to remember the grammatical properties of the looked-up words to
an extent which would be statistically significant. In fact, a positive effect of
examples on retention was noted, but it was too small to reach statistical sig-
nificance. Importantly, however, examples do not interfere with colours; the
use of colour in labels has a similar effect regardless of whether entries are rich
or minimalistic. In other words, the effect of functional labels in colour on
search time, information retrieval and retention does not depend on entry
completeness (cf. research question 3).
6. Discussion
Comparable time of information retrieval from complete and minimalistic

entries in the colour interface (see Figure 5) indicates that the presence of
examples, and by the same token entry size, does not entail a significant in-
crease in response times. This might suggest that a process similar to parallel
search took place; grammatical information in labels in the colour interface
apparently popped out from the rest of the entry and encouraged preattentive
processing (cf. Treisman and Gelade 1980: 99). Such processing stays in con-
trast to serial search, in which attention is focused on one item at a time until
the target is found or all items on a display are visited. Naturally, in serial
search, response times for target detection increase with the increase of display
size (Turatto et al. 2004: 298).10 The fact that the extraction of grammatical
information when labels were given in colour did not take significantly longer
in complete entries than in minimalistic ones appears to suggest that attention
could have been automatically grabbed by the labels. This finding together with
the significant reduction in search time in the colour condition in comparison
with the black and white condition (regardless of entry completeness) indicate
that colour apparently enhanced stimulus-driven selection of information from
the visual display. However, as mentioned above (Section 2.1), such exogenous
or bottom-up search is not the only type of search in dictionary entries, which,
undertaken to solve specific linguistic problems, typically has some endogenous
motivation. The conclusion from the study by Gaspelin et al. (2012) indicates
that even under parallel search, attentional capture is not driven by exogenous
(bottom-up) salience exclusively. They observed that “relevant cues produced
much greater capture than did irrelevant cues, even under parallel search”
(Gaspelin et al. 2012: 13). Endogenous control over the search for grammatical
information in the current study might explain why style labels in colour,
irrelevant to the task, did not prevent the colour-enhanced selection of

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grammatical information from being more effective than the search for gram-
mar in the black and white interface. Style labels, even though in colour, were
simply of no use in the task, and did not produce such a great capture effect as
functional labels in colour, which supplied information necessary to do the test
and whose consultation was endogenously motivated. In further experiments,
however, it might be advisable to include distractor tasks, not only cues, so that
the goal-directed search is more difficult to automate. It this way, the colour-
driven (exogenously motivated) search behaviour might be made more inde-
pendent, though naturally not separate from, endogenous control. The inter-
action between endogenous and exogenous (including colour-driven) control
over search for dictionary information should be carefully examined in the
future.
The study has a number of limitations, some of which suggest other direc-
tions of further research. It centred on the retrieval of grammatical information
from short entries in a grammar-focused task. It is by no means certain that
similar results could be obtained if other information categories had to be
retrieved from longer entries in different situations of dictionary use. It is
not known to what extent the results are colour-specific, either. Maybe differ-
ent effects could be observed if other colours were used in further investiga-
tions. The suitability of different colours for highlighting (different types of)
dictionary information seems to be another unexplored area of dictionary
design and use. Introducing flexibility in highlighting depending on individual
user preferences and contexts of dictionary use (e.g., reading comprehension,
writing formal essays, academic papers or informal e-mails, text correction or
proofreading) poses a serious challenge connected with successful use of col-
ours in dictionaries, which should also be taken on by researchers. In the pre-
sent study, as pointed out above, style labels were in colour, even though they
did not convey information useful in the test. Although they served to reduce
the salience of functional labels in colour, they did not cancel out their positive
effect. Yet, the study cannot answer the question as to whether there should be
any limit on the number of information categories displayed in colour at the
same time, beyond which colours might simply cease to be useful. Finally, only
immediate retention was tested. It remains to be seen whether colours could
enhance retention also in the long run. There is no doubt that an eye-tracking
study is needed to get a much better insight into the role of colours in electronic
dictionary interfaces.
Even more importantly, it might be instructive to empirically test the relative
usefulness of different highlighting methods. In existing dictionaries available
in black and white, various typographic tools usually serve to highlight infor-
mation, e.g., italics, bold print, capital letters, grey (rather than black) font. It is
vital to know if colour facilitates visual search and retention more than such
traditional highlighting techniques. Admittedly, the black and white interface
in the current study was not naturalistic, since no highlighting methods

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52 Anna Dziemianko
alternative to colour were employed. Although reliance on fabricated entries

and solutions infrequent in practice is justified in tightly controlled experimen-
tation, there is no denying that the next interesting question to be answered
empirically concerns the relative usefulness of colour and typography, or in
other words – the effectiveness of highlighting by colour versus typographic
highlighting (bold, italics, typeface; cf. Section 2.1). The investigation of such
issues was not the aim of the current study, which hopefully only managed to
bring the issue of colour to researchers’ attention. Considering the limitations
of the design and researchers’ relative lack of interest in aspects of highlighting
and typography in dictionaries so far, answering all relevant questions from the
start was simply impracticable. It should also be stressed that because of the
artificiality of the experimental conditions, the results in the present study
should be treated with caution, as the lack of any highlighting in the black
and white interface could have simply made dictionary search more difficult.
When designing further experiments, attention should be paid to findings
from other disciplines in which basic features of visual search, including col-
ours, have been investigated. For example, Nagy and Sanchez (1990) pointed
out that small differences in colour between targets and distractors do not
support visual search, and identified the smallest colour difference which
does. Besides, they noted that there are pairs of colours which do not facilitate
efficient visual search. It has also been found that if distractors are in hetero-
geneous colours, visual search for the target is efficient if the colours are widely
separated in colour space; similar distractor colours impede search if they flank
the target colour in colour space (D’Zmura 1991). These and other findings in
the field of visual search, psychology and information science suggest that
lexicography might need to become even more open to contributory disciplines
quite remote from linguistics (cf. Sinclair 1983, Kilgarriff 2012: 26).
Acknowledgement
Special thanks go to Mikolaj Placzek MSc, who adapted the Moodle logging
facility to the requirements of the experiment.
Notes
1 For example, http://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/.

2 Sensitivity to highlighting was measured by deducting response times for valid
trials from response times for invalid trials. The assumption was that if the highlighted
item was attended to first, reaction times for valid trials should be shorter than reaction
times for invalid trials. If highlighting was ignored, these two reaction times would be
very close (Tamborello and Byrne 2007: 184).
3 The materials concerned the cognitive theory of multimedia learning and were
shown as multimedia presentations (Jamet 2014: 49).
4 The entries can be seen in colour in the online version of the paper.

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5 Style labels, absent from the entry for professor, are also in purple in LDOCE5.
6 Individual aesthetic feelings, intuition and affiliation (e.g., the main colour on the
website of the institution where a dictionary was compiled) are the reasons usually given
by lexicographers enquired about the rationale behind the choice of specific colours for
entry elements.
7 See Varantola (1994: 609) for a critical assessment of the search options the CD-
ROM offered.
8 Unfortunately, for practical reasons, including the availability of subjects and the
computer laboratory, no pilot study could be conducted. Nonetheless, several academic
teachers and native speakers of English were consulted prior to the experiment to obtain
feedback on the reliability of test. They considered the test reliable and had no serious
reservations.
9 Test samples are given in the Appendix. They appear in colour in the online version
of the article.
10 In their feature-integration theory of attention, Treisman and Gelade (1980: 99)
assume that “simple features can be detected in parallel with no attention limits” (hence
the name parallel search), so the search for items distinguished by any such feature
remains unaffected by variations in the number of other unmarked items in the display.
They hold that parallel search applies when the searched-for target is a singleton, i.e.,
when it differs from other items in the visual field in one single feature (like colour, size,
motion, e.g., a red item among green items, or a blue letter among red Ts and green Xs).
In such conditions, a target distinguished by a single feature is salient in the search
display and is quickly detected independently of display size. For example, in the search
for a red item among green items, the number of green items makes hardly any differ-
ence (cf. Nagy and Sanchez 1990). As Wolfe (1998a: 17) puts it, “all items can be
processed at once to a level sufficient to distinguish targets from non-targets. The red
item, if present, ‘pops out’ and makes its presence known”. On the other hand, when the
target is defined by a conjunction of features (e.g., a vertical red line in a background of
horizontal red and vertical green lines, or a green T among red Ts and green Xs), a serial
search is used and the time of target detection increases with increasing display size
(Treisman and Gelade 1980: 99; Turatto et al. 2004: 298, Gaspelin et al. 2012: 1464).
Wolfe (1998a: 17) explains that when conjunctions of features come into play, “the
target might be the first item visited by attention. It might be the last item or it
might be any item in between. On average, attention will need to visit half of the
items.” Interestingly, in the study by Jonides and Yantis (1988), singletons defined by
static manipulation of colour did not elicit involuntary and automatic capture of atten-
tion, but only onset singletons did, i.e., those which appeared abruptly. Recently,
Gaspelin et al. (2012) have noted that attention capture effects by colour singletons
are greater in parallel than serial search, while capture effects by abrupt onsets were
greater for serial than parallel search. However, the distinction between the two search
modes (parallel and serial) has often been shown to be difficult to draw in the first place
(Pashler, 1987; Townsend, 1990; Wolfe, 1994, 1998a, 1998b).
References
A. Dictionaries and corpora

The Corpus of Contemporary American English. Brigham Young University. (COCA)
http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.
The Grandiloquent Dictionary. http://www.islandnet.com/~egbird/dict/dict.htm.

on 14 August 2018
54 Anna Dziemianko
Mayor, Michael. (ed.). 2009. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (Fifth edi-
tion.) Harlow: Longman. (LDOCE5) http://www.ldoceonline.com/.
McIntosh, Colin. (ed.). 2013. Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary. (Fourth edi-
tion.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (CALD4) http://dictionary.cam-
bridge.org/dictionary/learner-english/.
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Appendix
Sample 1a: Main test, labels in colour, complete entry
Sample 1b: Main test, labels in black and white, complete entry
Sample 1c: Retention test

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Sample 2a: Main test, labels in colour, minimalistic entry
Sample 2b: Main test, labels in black and white, minimalistic entry
Sample 2c: Retention test

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How Colours in Online Dictionaries Affect Lookup Speed, Effectiveness and Information Retention

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International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp.

Anna Dziemianko: Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan¤

Colours, still expensive in print, have become standard in electronic dictionaries,

# 2015 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,

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2.1 Colours, dictionaries and related research

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exogenous attention orienting mechanisms. In his study, participants in some

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not depend on how the information is presented, extraneous cognitive load

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Table 1: Entries for professor in MLDs online.

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Definitions are highlighted in violet in CALD4. MEDO, COBUILD7 and

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2.2 Examples in learners’ dictionaries

Examples have long been recognized as an integral element of dictionary

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based on a reading passage. The comprehension test was followed by a pro-

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3.1 Research aims

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Table 2: Test items: Originally selected words (with substitutes).

Nouns Verbs Adjectives

cynosure (joola) glad-hand (ted) thunderstruck (elapid)

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(1) It’s important to consider brumal factors.

It was based on the sentence extracted from COCA:

(2) Kulah says, it’s important to consider extenuating factors.

(3) We seek extenuating evidence, not irrelevant illustration.

(4) We seek brumal evidence, not irrelevant illustration.

(5) the burgeoning market for digital cameras

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Table 3: Manipulations in multiple choice questions.

Functional Correct option in mul- Incorrect options in multiple

noun no article before the the noun shown as countable;

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(6) the broad sweep of white cliffs around the bay

was considered inadequate to illustrate the noun cleg (sweep), labelled as

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Figure 1: Main test versions.

interface condition. Entry was a within-subject (repeated measures) factor,

3.3 Subjects and procedures

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Black and white interface Color interface

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Black and white interface Color interface

4.2 Main test results

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Black and white interface Color interface

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Comparable time of information retrieval from complete and minimalistic

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alternative to colour were employed. Although reliance on fabricated entries

1 For example, http://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/.

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