Abstract
Word frequency (WF), number of letter moves, and solution word transition letter probabilities (TP) were related to anagram solution. The solution word TP measure was based on the relative frequencies of correct to incorrect bigrams within the pool of bigrams defined by the letters of the anagram rather than on the absolute frequencies of the correct bigrams. This bigram rank measure, which also took word length and letter position into account, was a powerful predictor of anagram difficulty (p < .001). Likewise, number of letter moves predicted anagram solution strongly (p < .001), but WF was only a marginal predictor (.05 < p < .10). In addition, there were no significant interactions among the three variables, nor wasanagram TP consistently related to anagram difficulty. The results were interpreted in terms of an approach which combined elements of an hypothesis and an S-R mediational theory.
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Work on this research was begun by the senior author at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California and completed at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research, University of California, Berkeley. We wish to thank colleagues and staff of both institutions and Professor Geoffrey Keppel for their help and encouragement. Thanks are due, too, to Christopher Flindt and Barbara Gruen for their help in collecting the data. Ms. O’Brien is now at the University of Oregon.
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Mendelsohn, G.A., O’Brien, A.T. The solution of anagrams: A reexamination of the effects of transition letter probabilities, letter moves, and word frequency on anagram difficulty. Memory & Cognition 2, 566–574 (1974). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196922
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196922