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Partial knowledge in vocabulary acquisition: General constraints and

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Article in Journal of Educational Psychology · June 1990

DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.82.2.315

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Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 1990 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1990, Vol. 82, No. 2,315-318 0022-O663/90/S00.75

Partial Knowledge in Vocabulary Acquisition:

General Constraints and Specific Detail
Wendelyn J. Shore and Francis T. Durso
University of Oklahoma

The authors investigated the relationship of partial word knowledge and instruction by asking
subjects to choose, from a pair of sentences, the correct use of a target word that they had or had
not looked up in a dictionary. When the correct sentence of the pair could be chosen on the
basis of general semantic constraints, subjects performed well even for words they had dented
were part of their language, and instruction had no effect. Studying dictionary definitions did,
however, increase the amount of specific, detailed information available in memory.

Researchers have speculated on the role of partial word
knowledge in the area of reading comprehension and vocab-
ulary acquisition and on the exact characteristics of known
words (e.g., Beck, McKeown, & Omanson, 1987; Dale, 1965;
Loewenthal, 1971; Loewenthal & Gibbs, 1974; Trembly,
1966). Three general levels of word knowledge can be identi-
fied: One may know nothing at all about the word's meaning;
one may have complete knowledge of the word's meaning; or
knowledge may fall between these two extremes. Different
researchers have operationalized these levels of word knowl-
edge in different ways, especially the intermediate level of
familiarity where some, but not complete, knowledge is
assumed.
Like Loewenthal (1971), we identified words about which
the reader has no knowledge as "unknown*' words. According
to Dale (1965), these are words to which the reader responds,
"I never saw the word before.* At the other extreme, words
that constitute the expressive vocabulary were classified as
"known" words (Dale, 1965; Loewenthal, 1971).
In addition to these two extremes of word knowledge, there
is a somewhat nebulous intermediate level that has been
defined in a variety of ways. One of the clearest conceptuali-
zations of this level is given by Dale (1965) and again by
Trembly (1966). Dale characterized this level by the state-
ment, "I know there is such a word, but I don't know what it
means." Such words have been encountered in some form,
most likely in the context of reading or listening. Trembly
labeled this type as frontier words because they exist at the
"frontier" of the learner's knowledge. We have adopted Trem-
bly's nomenclature in our discussion of this intermediate level
of word knowledge. Hence, our study focuses on three levels
of word knowledge: unknown, frontier, and known.
This project was part of the first author's master thesis under the
direction of the second author.
Support from the National Science Foundation Grant IST-
8418853 to the second author is gratefully acknowledged.
We thank Larry E. Toothaker, Richard Reardon, Joe Rodgers, and
Tom Dayton for their help with the manuscript, and Baron Van
Burkleo and Jon Wright for their help with data collection.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Francis T. Durso, Department of Psychology, University of Okla-
homa, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, or Bitnet: AM1067@UOKMVSA.
Levels of word knowledge have received some empirical
attention. While investigating incidental learning from con-
text, Jenkins, Stein, and Wysocki (1984) manipulated sub-
jects' prior experiences with the meanings of the words to be
learned. They speculated that many of the target words used
in vocabulary acquisition studies may be frontier words rather
than unknown words as has been assumed. Subjects per-
formed significantly better on tests of vocabulary knowledge
after context learning of preexposed words than they did after
context learning of unknown words.
When others measured familiarity using an assessment of
prior experience rather than a laboratory manipulation, the
results disagreed with Jenkins et al. (1984). Nagy, Herman,
and Anderson (1985) assessed the subjects' preexperimental
knowledge of the words. Subjects then read a passage that
contained the target words. Their results indicated that sub-
jects benefited more from context for unknown words than
for words about which they had partial knowledge
Whether or not instruction has an impact on familiar words
may depend on the extent to which that instruction augments
the information that already exists in the lexicon. Instruction
used by Nagy et al. (1985) may have had little impact on
familiar words because the context instruction duplicated the
preexperimental experiences that placed the word on the
frontier. Frontier words are familiar because of prior experi-
ence in context, and additional training in context may not
supply the type of information essential to make the word
part of the subject's active vocabulary. Words at different
levels may differ in a qualitative rather than a quantitative
way; thus, effective instruction may require the introduction
of information other than that normally constituting partial
knowledge.
This difference between levels of word knowledge may be
one of implicit versus explicit knowledge (e.g., Schacter, 1987)
of the word's meaning. In fact, Loewenthal (1971) found that
subjects performed surprisingly accurately on items that used
unknown words, and she hypothesized that "it may be that
subjects have some knowledge of the word without being
aware of it" (p. 227). Readers may have implicit memories
for the meanings of their frontier words and perhaps also for
their unknown words, whereas words in levels beyond the
frontier are represented by more explicit memories. Further,
it is possible that the information that makes meaning explicit

315
316 WENDELYN J. SHORE AND FRANCIS T. DURSO
is qualitatively different from the meaning that is present in
an implicit memory.
A reasonable initial hypothesis is that implicit memories
are those that contain constraint information about a word,
whereas explicit memories contain more specific, detailed
information about the meaning of a word. To test this hy-
pothesis, we developed two types of sentences. One type
required subjects to know only the most general constraints
concerning a word's meaning, such as whether it is a "good"
word or a "bad" word, or whether it refers to a person or to
an action. The second sentence type required knowledge of
more than just general constraints. Rather, it was necessary
for the subject to know more details specific to the meaning
of the particular word.
To address the question of how instruction interacts with
partial knowledge, we presented half our subjects with stan-
dard dictionary definitions of the target words. Does looking
up a word in a dictionary tend to aid words at one level of
knowledge more than another? Dictionary definitions have
proved to be a relatively weak method of increasing vocabu-
lary knowledge (e.g., Beck et al., 1987). However, the impo-
tence of dictionary definitions may not necessarily hold for
ail levels of word knowledge. In addition, dictionary def-
initions may supply only one type of knowledge about a
word, either constraint information or specific, detailed
information.
Finally, our experiment attempted to assess levels of word
knowledge more precisely than has been the case in the past
(see Curtis, 1987). For instance, Loewenthal (1971) had sub-
jects rate the target words according to their familiarity; they
were never asked to define a word or to use it correctly in a
sentence. Similarly, Nagy et al. (1985) simply required sub-
jects to indicate whether or not the word's meaning was
known. Again, subjects were not required to supply a defini-
tion for the word or to use the word correctly in a sentence.
In the following study, levels of word knowledge were assessed
by filtering each word for each subject through a series of
questions that required progressively less understanding of
the target word.
Method
Design
This experiment was a 2 (sentence type: constraint only or detail)
x 2 (study: studied or not studied) x 3 (word level: unknown, frontier,
or known) mixed factorial, with repeated measures on word level.
Sentence type and study condition were manipulated between
subjects.
Subjects
One hundred thirty-two volunteers from the introductory psychol-
ogy subject pool at the University of Oklahoma served as subjects.
They were tested in pairs randomly assigned to study condition and
sentence type. All subjects were native English speakers and were
comparable on a measure of preexperimental verbal ability: Overall
mean on the vocabulary subscale of the Shipley-Hartford Intelligence
Test was 72%.
Materials
Word pool. We compiled a pool of 158 words, Some were thought
to be in the vocabulary of the typical subject and some not. To
confirm this supposition, a group of students from the same pool as
our subjects participated in a norming study. They were asked to
check all of the words with which they were familiar or had heard
before, and then to define all of the words they had checked or to
write a sentence using the word if they could not define it. Of the 158
words, 60 words spanning the range of word knowledge were retained
for this experiment.
Precheck. A precheck was used to determine levels of word
knowledge for each subject. Classification of each word for a partic-
ular subject depended on that subject's response to the word on the
precheck. In addition to the 60 words, 15 plausible nonwords were
included (e.g., phisteron). These nonwords were developed by the
experimenters and followed the rules of English orthography. The
nonwords permitted a purer measure of the unknown level of word
knowledge. Order of the 75 items on the precheck was randomized
across subjects.
Sentences. Two sentence pairs were created for each of the 60
words. One sentence used the word correctly; this sentence was always
used as the correct sentence member of the sentence pair (e.g., The
dowager has her deceased husband to thank for her great wealth).
The incorrect sentence used defined the constraint-only and specific,
detailed sentence groups.
In the constraint-only sentence group, the incorrect sentence con-
tained an anomalous use of the target word (e.g., The circus performer
could juggle the dowager and two bowling pins). These sentences
were designed so that knowledge of only the most general constraints
of the target words was sufficient to choose the correct sentence. The
incorrect sentences in the detail sentence group required a greater
understanding of the target word's meaning than did the incorrect
sentences in the constraint-only sentence group (e.g., The dowager
and her husband recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniver-
sary)- In the detail sentence group, the incorrect sentences were
constructed so that knowledge of only the general constraints of the
target word was insufficient to distinguish the correct and incorrect
versions of the sentence.
Order of the 60 pairs of sentences was randomized across subjects
for each sentence group. For half of the words, the incorrect sentence
appeared above the correct sentence, whereas for the other half the
incorrect sentence was presented below.
Procedure
Precheck. Upon entering the laboratory, subjects were asked to
complete the precheck. Responses were subject paced. On their first
pass through the precheck, they were told to define the words whose
definitions they knew by writing a short definition or by giving a
synonym of the word. Subjects were told that it was acceptable to
leave a word undefined if they were not sure of its meaning.
After completing the definition phase, subjects were asked to go
through the precheck again and attempt to use each of the remaining
words in a sentence. It was acceptable to leave a word blank if the
subject was not confident enough of his or her knowledge of its
meaning to use it in a sentence. Words for which the subject gave a
correct definition or wrote a sentence that used the word correctly
formed the set of known words for that subject.
Upon completion of the sentence phase, subjects were instructed
to make another pass through the precheck. For any words they could
not define or use in a sentence, subjects were asked to place a check
by the word if it was familiar to them. They were told that this would
include any word that they had heard or seen before, even if they had
 PARTIAL WORD KNOWLEDGE 317

no real idea what it meant. Words that were checked, but for which Table 1
no attempt at a definition or sentence was made, formed the set of Means and Standard Deviations of Proportion Correct on the
frontier words for that subject. Sentence Decision Task
Finally, subjects made one more pass through the precheck. On
this final pass, they were told that if there was anything left on the Word level
list that they thought was a word, they should circle it. Subjects were Sentence type Unknown Frontier Known
informed that not all of the words on the precheck were valid English
words. They were instructed that if they did not circle a letter string, Constraint
it meant they thought the letter string was not a word in the English Nonstudied
language. The words left uncircled formed the set of unknown words M .70 .76 .98
for that subject. SD .24 .20 .04
Definition presentation. Following the precheck, subjects ran- Studied
domly assigned to the study condition were shown definitions of the M .71 .75 .95
60 English words used in the precheck. Each definition was presented SD .23 .22 .08
only once to approximate a reader's exposure to a definition when it
is simply looked up in a dictionary. Definitions were typed on 3 X 5 Detail
index cards; the target word was centered above its definition. Defi- Nonstudied
nitions from the Oxford English Dictionary (1971) or Webster's New M .49 .60 .93
World Dictionary, Second College Edition (Guralnik, 1982) were SD .18 .18 .06
used. Subjects were told that they would have 10 seconds to study Studied
each of the definitions. Subjects turned to the next card when they M .72 .72 .91
heard a tone on a cassette tape. Order of the 60 cards was randomized SD .27 .19 .09
across subjects.
In lieu of studying, subjects randomly assigned to the no-definition
condition completed the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT; .030, p < .001. Second, overall, studying the definition helped,
Oltman, Raskin, &. Witkin, 1971) as a distractor task. Standard F(l, 115) = 7.22, MSe = .030, p < .01. Third, the more
administration of the GEFT was followed.
familiar the word, the better subjects performed, F(2, 114) =
Sentence decision task. Following study of the words or comple-
tion of the distractor task, subjects were randomly assigned to either 3.77, MSe = .033, p < .05. However, these factors were
the constraint-only sentence group or the detail sentence group. They involved in three interactions: Sentence Type x Study, F{ 1,
were instructed to read each pair of sentences and to mark the 115) = 9.68, MS, = .030, p < .01; Word Level x Study, F(2,
sentence that used the underlined word appropriately. Subjects were 114) = 6.53, MSe = -033, p < .01; and the triple interaction
told that there would always be one sentence that used the word of Sentence Type x Study x Word Level, F(2, 114) = 3.57,
correctly, and that they should guess if they were not sure which MSe = .033, p < .05. The Study x Word Level interaction
sentence contained the correct usage. Subjects were given as much suggests that studying dictionary definitions produced the
time as needed to complete this sentence decision task. greatest benefit for unknown words and no benefit for known
Shipley-Hartford Intelligence Test. Upon completion of the sen- words; frontier words benefited an intermediate amount. The
tence decision task, subjects were administered the vocabulary section Study x Sentence Type interaction suggests that studying
of the Shipley-Hartford Intelligence Test (Sines, 1958). This test was dictionary definitions aids the learner only by supplying spe-
used to measure subjects' preexperimental vocabulary knowledge and
was included as a covariate in the statistical analyses. None of the
cific information.
target words were included on the Shipley-Hartford Intelligence Test. These two conclusions were also apparent in the triple
interaction. When the advantage of studying (study perform-
ance minus nonstudy performance) is considered as a function
Results of word level, it is clear that reading a dictionary definition
supplies almost no constraint information beyond what the
Frequencies of unknown, frontier, and known words were subject already has; even if the subject denied the letter string
computed for each subject. Data of 12 of the subjects were was an English word, studying provided only a 1 percentage
deleted because they did not have words in all of these point advantage (.71 vs. .70) in the constraint condition. On
categories. The proportion correct within each of the cate- the other hand, in the specific sentence condition, studying
gories was computed for each subject, and these means appear adds considerable specific information to unknown words
in Table 1. Planned comparisons indicated that performance (+.23), some to frontier words (+.12), and, of course, nothing
in all conditions was reliably above chance (.50) except when to known words (-.02).
subjects made judgments that required detailed knowledge of
unknown words they had not studied. The data were submit- Discussion
ted to a Sentence Type (2) x Study (2) x Word Level (3)
multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). A MANCOVA It appears that dictionary definitions impart specific infor-
was used to account for violations of sphericity (Winer, 1971) mation about a word rather than general constraint informa-
that may occur across the repeated measure. tion. Accuracy on the constraint sentences was not improved
The MANCOVA revealed three significant main effects. First, by presentation of the dictionary definition. In fact, subjects
distinguishing between correct and incorrect sentences in the entered the experiment with quite a bit of information about
constraint-only sentence condition was generally easier than the constraints of words, even words they denied were part of
in the detail sentence condition, F(\, 115) = 16.34, MSK = their language. In keeping with Loewenthal (1971), we found
318 WENDELYN J. SHORE AND FRANCIS T. DURSO
that subjects were surprisingly accurate on sentences contain-
ing their unknown words in the constraint sentence condition.
This provides preliminary support for the hypothesis that
subjects have implicit memories for the meanings of words,
even for words they do not identify as an English word. This
implicit knowledge is knowledge of general constraints of a
word rather than specific, detailed information about the
word's meaning.
Our results support Nagy et al.'s (1985) findings that sub-
jects improved the most on their unknown words. However,
our work shows that, for dictionary definitions, this was only
true in the specific, detailed sentence condition. When the
letter string is so unfamiliar as to be outside the reader's
language, direct instruction of the meaning can be beneficial:
Looking the word up in the dictionary will supply specific
information, but little in the way of the constraints necessary
to use the word properly. However, it would seem these
constraints are already available in memory, at least for
several words, in some implicit form. This is consistent with
Miller and Gildea's (1987) observation that children acquire
a word's meaning in two stages: a rapid stage during which
children assign new words to categories, and a slower stage
during which distinctions are made between words within a
category. Because the constraint sentences required basic cat-
egory knowledge, dictionary definitions added little informa-
tion that subjects did not already have.
When knowledge is assessed with a multiple-choice format
of the type used here, dictionary definitions can be a good
way to acquire detailed vocabulary knowledge, especially for
the most unfamiliar words. Such definintions could be valu-
able in learning technical vocabulary where the constraints
are imposed by the situation and learning environment, and
where the specific, detailed information is of critical impor-
tance (e.g.. Black & Moran, 1981). However, most educators
should be reluctant to embrace dictionary definitions, not
because they are ineffective generally, but because this type
of definition provides only very specific information and
nothing about the appropriate constraints.
In conclusion, our work has shown that it is possible to
tease apart methodologically the type of partial word knowl-
edge that the learner has. In addition, it is possible to assess
not only whether the intervention in question is effective, but
also the type of information that the intervention provides.
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Received March 13, 1989
Revision received September 29, 1989
Accepted October 10, 1989