Reliability of familiarity rating of ordinary Japanese words for different years and places

Two-word familiarity sets were measured in different years (1995 and 2002) and places (Kanto and Kinki, in Japan) for a large number of Japanese words, to examine the reliability of familiarity ratings. The correlation between the word familiarities of the two sets was extremely high (r =.958, N = 10,515). It is suggested that familiarity rating, at least for ordinary words found in a dictionary, is very reliable and not greatly affected by differences in years and places.