Rejuvenating the English Lexicon Project

二十年前，国家科学基金会资助了英语词典项目(ELP)的发展，这是一个关键的数据库，研究人员探索人们是如何阅读的。ELP对6所大学收集的1200多名参与者的4万多个单词进行了单词识别。重要的是，这些数据通过一个用户友好的网站elicion.wust.edu向更广泛的研究社区提供。使用该数据库，研究人员可以选择具有特定特征的刺激，用于探索阅读的本质及其神经基础的实验。此外，该数据库在确定影响阅读过程的新变量方面发挥了重要作用。这个数据库对研究的影响体现在超过1600条(谷歌学者)对描述该项目的原始出版物(2007年)的引用上。世界各地的研究人员每周约有250次访问该网站。这是一个最好的例子，说明了大数据如何能够对一个具有明确应用意义的重要理论领域产生实质性影响，即个人如何阅读单词。此ELP正在过时的计算机上运行，该计算机已超过其预期寿命，不再支持原始软件界面。这项提议是使用华盛顿大学心理和脑科学系内的虚拟计算机系统支持的当前软件来重写用户界面的程序。这将确保心理语言学社区仍然可以使用该数据库。

Two decades ago, the National Science Foundation supported the development of the English Lexicon Project (ELP), a critical database for researchers exploring how people read. The ELP affords measures of word recognition for over 40,000 words across over 1200 participants that were collected at six universities. Importantly, these data are made available to the wider research community via a user-friendly website at elexicon.wust.edu. Using the database, researchers can select stimuli with specific characteristics for experiments exploring the nature of reading and its neural underpinnings. Moreover, the database has been important in identifying new variables that influence the reading process. The impact of this database on research is exemplified by the over 1600 (google scholar) citations to the original (2007) publication describing the project. The website is accessed approximately 250 times each week from researchers worldwide. This is a prime example of how big data can have a substantial impact on a theoretically important area that has clear applied implications, i.e., how individuals read words. This ELP is being run on an outdated computer that has outlived its life expectancy and the original software interface is no longer supported. This proposal is to rewrite the programs for the user interface using current software supported by a virtual computer system within the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University. This will ensure the database remains available to the psycholinguistic community.