naa a22 4500 510777570 CHVBK 20180411083235.0 cr unu---uuuuu 180411e20130601xx s 000 0 eng 10.3758/s13428-012-0270-5 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.3758/s13428-012-0270-5 Dealing with zero word frequencies: A review of the existing rules of thumb and a suggestion for an evidence-based choice [Elektronische Daten] [Marc Brysbaert, Kevin Diependaele] In a critical review of the heuristics used to deal with zero word frequencies, we show that four are suboptimal, one is good, and one may be acceptable. The four suboptimal strategies are discarding words with zero frequencies, giving words with zero frequencies a very low frequency, adding 1 to the frequency per million, and making use of the Good-Turing algorithm. The good algorithm is the Laplace transformation, which consists of adding 1 to each frequency count and increasing the total corpus size by the number of word types observed. A strategy that may be acceptable is to guess the frequency of absent words on the basis of other corpora and then increasing the total corpus size by the estimated summed frequency of the missing words. A comparison with the lexical decision times of the English Lexicon Project and the British Lexicon Project suggests that the Laplace transformation gives the most useful estimates (in addition to being easy to calculate). Therefore, we recommend it to researchers. Psychonomic Society, Inc., 2012 Word frequency nationallicence Laplace transformation nationallicence Good-Turing algorithm nationallicence Zero frequency nationallicence Brysbaert Marc Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, H. Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium aut Diependaele Kevin Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, H. Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium aut Behavior Research Methods Springer-Verlag 45/2(2013-06-01), 422-430 45:2<422 2013 45 13428 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0270-5 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0270-5 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Brysbaert Marc Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, H. Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Diependaele Kevin Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, H. Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Behavior Research Methods Springer-Verlag 45/2(2013-06-01), 422-430 45:2<422 2013 45 13428 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer