Varnhagen.pdf

728 C. K. Varnhagen et al.
We also found few typographical errors and misspellings in our corpus. A
paired samples t-test revealed no statistically significant differences between
misspellings and typographical errors. Misspellings were generally phonetic
misspellings of words that are not likely of high enough frequency to merit a short
cut of their own (e.g., actualy, awsome). Typographical errors included common
right-left hand errors, such a knwo (knwo is such a common typographical error
that some word processing programs will automatically correct for it), letter
reversals (e.g., carzy for crazy), and extra letters that are adjacent on the keyboard
(e.g. whatds).
We found many individual differences in use of new language. For example, one
participant expressed shock with pragmatic lengthening (WHAT), another used
pragmatic lengthening (whaaaat), and another added extra punctuation (what!!!!!).
Similarly, one participant finished a conversation with word combination (gotta go),
another used an acronym (g2g), and another used a number word (got 2 go). These
individual differences led to few correlations between different types of new
language use, namely between abbreviations and use of word combinations,
r(38) = 0.61, p \ 0.001, and between typographical errors and use of upper case to
express emotion, r(38) = 0.51, p \ 0.005. On the other hand, these correlations
make intuitive sense: both abbreviations (e.g., em for them or cause for because) and
word combinations (e.g., gonna for going to or kinda for kind of) shorten common
words and speed up typing. Use of upper case requires holding down the shift key or
setting and unsetting the ‘‘Caps Lock’’ key and can easily lead to typographical
errors.
Effects of gender, age, and spelling on new language use
Because age and spelling ability as measured by standardized scores on the WRAT
Spelling subtest are continuous variables, we conducted multiple regression
analyses, as opposed to analysis of variance, to examine the effects of gender,
age, and spelling ability on new language use. Because we were interested in
potential interactions among these independent variable, we also used centered
variables to allow us to include interaction effects. Centering variables controls for
issues with multicolinearity between the variable and their interactions and allows
for easier interpretation of the regression coefficients (Aiken & West, 1991). As
well, because we had no a priori expectations about how all the variables might or
might not fit in the model, we conducted stepwise analyses. Identical to analysis of
variance, the weightings and statistical significance of the independent variables and
their interactions in the stepwise multiple regressions alerted us to the importance of
these variables. We then decomposed the statistically significant interaction effects
using correlational analyses.
We conducted a total of 15 stepwise multiple regressions, considering total new
language use and each category of new language use as the dependent variables. We
obtained statistically significant results for total new language use, use of
abbreviations, and misspellings.
Considering first total new language use, we found a statistically significant effect
of gender and an interaction between gender and spelling ability, F(2, 37) = 7.05,
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