一千二百個本國文字有意義之評定

SCALING 1,200 CHINESE CHARACTERS FOR MEANINGFULNESS

根據很多西方的研究，字的有意義度（Meaningfulness）是一種相當重要的變項（Underwood & Schulz, 1960）。學一個高有意義度的字構成的列表比學一個低有意義度的字構成的列表容易。換一句話說，字的有意義度決定學習速度。字的有意義度概念可推廣到一般的語言單位。語言單位是有先後次序的幾個字母的集合。

1,200 Chinese characters (divided into 4 sets of 300 each) were scaled by 2,000 freshmen (divided into 4 groups of 500 each) for meaningfulness. Ss were asked to write down the first associate and, at the same time, to rate the association value by means of a 5-point scale. For each character, Ss were to respond within 10 sec. The data, based on half of the Ss, were analyzed according to scale value, popular response, second popular response, percentage of responses, and number of distinct responses to each character. It was pointed out that, because of some uniqueness of Chinese language, the study of its meaningfulness presents rich problems for further investigation.