Imagery,concreteness, goodness,and familiarity ratings for 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs

Partly in order to facilitate research on the relation between some standard psychological variables, we gathered normative data on 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson, 1970). The scales for which we gathered data are imagery, concreteness, goodness , and familiarity. These norms may be of value to researchers who wish to sample linguistic units larger than the word from a set that contains an extensive number of unfamiliar and familiar items. To illustrate the possible uses to which these data may be put, we presented a causal model of the relation between the four variables mentioned above.     

Age-of-acquisition,imagery, concreteness,familiarity, and ambiguity measures for 1,944 words

Age-of-acquisition, imagery, concreteness, familiarity, and ambiguity measures for 1,944 words of varying length and frequency of occurrence are presented. The words can all be used as nouns. Intergroup reliabilities are satisfactory on all attributes. Correlations with previous word lists are significant, and the intercorrelations between measures match previous findings.     

Meaning-dependent ratings of imagery,age of acquisition,familiarity, and concreteness for 387 ambiguous words

The problem of word ambiguity has generally been overlooked in compiling lists of words measured on various attributes. In this study, rating measures were obtained on the meanings of 387 words, the ambiguity of which had been established empirically. Imagery, age-of-acquisition, concreteness, and familiarity ratings are reported for each meaning, together with an index of meaning dominance. The results suggest that the most dominant meanings tend to be the most imageable, concrete, familiar, and earliest acquired. Generally satisfactory correlations with other norms were obtained.     

An additional measure of availability derived from theOxford English Dictionary

In order to develop an additional measure of availability for the nouns from Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan’s (1968) list, we used a CD-ROM version of theOxford English Dictionary (OED) to obtain the number of times a word was used to define other words. This variable was added to Rubin and Friendly’s (1986) set of measures for these words. In multiple regression analyses, our measure proved to be a useful predictor of free recall. These results suggest that the OED may be useful for providing additional psycholinguistic measures.     

Age-of-acquisition,imagery, familiarity and meaningfulness norms for 543 words

The age at which words are first learned appears to be more influential in determining the ease of retrieving words from semantic memory than objective frequency, familiarity, imagery, and meaningfulness. To facilitate research on a wider variety of tasks, we present norms for 543 words for age-of-acquisition, imagery, familiarity, and meaningfulness. Most of the words form single-solution anagrams. There are 471 six-letter nouns and 72 five-letter words. Also reported are the means, SDs, and ranges for each dimension and the intercorrelations between dimensions. Intergroup reliabilities ranged from .847 to .982.     

Imagery,concreteness, age-of-acquisition,familiarity, and meaningfulness values for 205 five-letter words having single-solution anagrams

Solution-word imagery appears to affect difficulty of anagram solving. To assist research in this area, we present imagery, concreteness, age-of-acquisition, familiarity, and meaningfulness values for 205 five-letter words known to form single-solution anagrams. None of the words have repeated letters. Intergroup reliabilities were satisfactory on all attributes. Significant correlations were found with previous word lists and the intercorrelations between dimensions matched previous findings.     

Norms of valence,arousal, concreteness,familiarity, imageability,and context availability for 1,100 Chinese words

In the present study, we collected valence, arousal, concreteness, familiarity, imageability, and context availability ratings for a total of 1,100 Chinese words. The ratings for all variables were collected with 9-point Likert scales. We tested the reliability of the present database by comparing it to the extant Chinese Affective Word System, and performed split-half correlations for all six variables. We then evaluated the relationships between all variables. Regarding the affective variables, we found a typical quadratic relation between valence and arousal, in line with previous findings. Likewise, significant correlations were found between the semantic variables. Importantly, we explored the relationships between ratings for the affective variables (i.e., valence and arousal) and concreteness ratings, suggesting that valence and arousal ratings can predict concreteness ratings. This database of affective norms will be a valuable source of information for emotion research that makes use of Chinese words, and will enable researchers to use highly controlled Chinese verbal stimuli to more reliably investigate the relation between cognition and emotion.     

Meaningfulness values of words: relation to concreteness, imagery, emotionality, and interest.

We estimated that, contrary to previous studies, there was a positive correlation between ratings of meaningfulness and of emotionality of words. The correlation was .36 between ratings of meaningfulness and emotionality obtained by Campos and González but .03 with ratings obtained in 1990 by Campos. Hypothesized positive correlations for ratings of meaningfulness with ratings of concreteness, imagery, and interest were significant.     

The Toronto Word Pool: Norms for imagery,concreteness, orthographic variables,and grammatical usage for 1,080 words

Imagery and concreteness norms and percentage noun usage were obtained on the 1,080 verbal items from the Toronto Word Pool. Imagery was defined as the rated ease with which a word aroused a mental image, and concreteness was defined in relation to level of abstraction. The degree to which a word was functionally a noun was estimated in a sentence generation task. The mean and standard deviation of the imagery and concreteness ratings for each item are reported together with letter and printed frequency counts for the words and indications of sex differences in the ratings. Additional data in the norms include a grammatical function code derived from dictionary definitions, a percent noun judgment, indexes of statistical approximation to English, and an orthographic neighbor ratio. Validity estimates for the imagery and concreteness ratings are derived from comparisons with scale values drawn from the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968) noun pool and the Toglia and Battig (1978) norms.     

Measures of free recall of 900 English nouns: Correlations with imagery,concreteness, meaningfulness,and frequency

Forty groups of subjects were given six lists of 25 nouns each for immediate free written recall. A measure of free recall was thereby obtained for each of 900 nouns in the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968) norms, each noun’s measure based on the recall of 32 subjects. First-order correlations showed recall to be correlated with imagery, concreteness, meaningfulness, Thorndike-Lorge frequency, and Kuěra-Francis frequency. Partial correlations showed meaningfulness to be essentially unrelated to recall and concreteness only moderately related. In contrast to previous comparisons, which were based on smaller ranges of frequency and were more susceptible to list-specific effects, imagery and frequency were found to be approximately equal in their influence on free recall.     

Practice, familiarity and reading rate for words and nonsense syllables

Two experiments were carried out to test a number of hypotheses regarding the effects of practice and S-R familiarity on choice reaction times. In Experiment 1 subjects read lists of nonsense syllables of varying levels of association value and differing degrees of choice. It was found that the slope of reading time per syllable was linear with respect to the log of the number of choices, but that the slope was steeper for syllables of lower association value. In Experiment 2, 4-and 32-choice lists of the same average association value nonsense syllables were read on three successive days, as were lists of common three-letter words. The words showed zero slope against number of choices, and the slope for the nonsense syllables decreased with practice. These results are considered to support recent modifications to views on the role of information theory in psychology.     

Norms of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words

Word processing studies increasingly make use of regression analyses based on large numbers of stimuli (the so-called megastudy approach) rather than experimental designs based on small factorial designs. This requires the availability of word features for many words. Following similar studies in English, we present and validate ratings of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words. These include nearly all lemmas language researchers are likely to be interested in. The ratings are freely available for research purposes.     

Measuring symbol and icon characteristics: Norms for concreteness, complexity, meaningfulness, familiarity, and semantic distance for 239 symbols

This paper provides rating norms for a set of symbols and icons selected from a wide variety of sources. These ratings enable the effects of symbol characteristics on user performance to be systematically investigated. The symbol characteristics that have been quantified are considered to be of central relevance to symbol usability research and include concreteness, complexity, meaningfulness, familiarity, and semantic distance. The interrelationships between each of these dimensions is examined and the importance of using normative ratings for experimental research is discussed.     

The Minho Word Pool: Norms for imageability,concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 Portuguese words

Words are widely used as stimuli in cognitive research. Because of their complexity, using words requires strict control of their objective (lexical and sublexical) and subjective properties. In this work, we present the Minho Word Pool (MWP), a dataset that provides normative values of imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 (European) Portuguese words—three subjective measures that, in spite of being used extensively in research, have been scarce for Portuguese. Data were collected with 2,357 college students who were native speakers of European Portuguese. The participants rated 100 words drawn randomly from the full set for each of the three subjective indices, using a Web survey procedure (via a URL link). Analyses comparing the MWP ratings with those obtained for the same words from other national and international databases showed that the MWP norms are reliable and valid, thus providing researchers with a useful tool to support research in all neuroscientific areas using verbal stimuli. The MWP norms can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.     

French norms of imagery for pictures, for concrete and abstract words]

This paper deals with French norms for mental image versus picture agreement for 138 pictures and the imagery value for 138 concrete words and 69 abstract words. The pictures were selected from Snodgrass et Vanderwart's norms (1980). The concrete words correspond to the dominant naming response to the pictorial stimuli. The abstract words were taken from verbal associative norms published by Ferrand (2001). The norms were established according to two variables: 1) mental image vs. picture agreement, and 2) imagery value of words. Three other variables were controlled: 1) picture naming agreement; 2) familiarity of objects referred to in the pictures and the concrete words, and 3) subjective verbal frequency of words. The originality of this work is to provide French imagery norms for the three kinds of stimuli usually compared in research on dual coding. Moreover, these studies focus on figurative and verbal stimuli variations in visual imagery processes.     

Retrieval of concrete words involves more contextual information than abstract words: multiple components for the concreteness effect

The current study used the directed forgetting paradigm in implicit and explicit memory to investigate the concreteness effect. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore the neural basis of this phenomenon. The behavioral results showed a clear concreteness effect in both implicit and explicit memory tests; participants responded significantly faster to concrete words than to abstract words. The ERP results revealed a concreteness effect (N400) in both the encoding and retrieval phases. In addition, behavioral and ERP results showed an interaction between word concreteness and memory instruction (to-be-forgotten vs. to-be-remembered) in the late epoch of the explicit retrieval phase, revealing a significant concreteness effect only under the to-be-remembered instruction condition. This concreteness effect was realized as an increased P600-like component in response to concrete words relative to abstract words, likely reflecting retrieval of contextual details. The time course of the concreteness effect suggests advantages of concrete words over abstract words due to greater contextual information.     

Word norms for blind and sighted subjects: Familiarity,concreteness, meaningfulness,imageability, imagery modality,and word associations

Normative values for word characteristics were obtained from a sample of 12 college-educated, totally congenitally blind subjects on the basis of their ratings of 161 nouns on scales of familiarity, concreteness, meaningfulness, and imageability. The dominant modality of imagery for each image-evoking word and the strongest word associate for each item also were recorded. The same data were collected for a group of sighted subjects, both to provide a comparison group for the blind subjects and to test the comparability of sighted subjects’ ratings with existing norms. Ratings for sighted subjects correlated strongly with those norms, although the coefficients were slightly higher for ratings of concreteness and imageability than for ratings of familiarity and meaningfulness. Ratings of blind subjects correlated only slightly lower with existing norms for imagery and concreteness, but considerably lower for familiarity and meaningfulness.     

Imagery, concreteness, and meaningfulness as determiners of the emotionality of words when meaning is controlled.

We studied variables that influenced rated emotionality value of words and the contribution of each one. 218 subjects rated each word in a list of 98 pairs of words (196 words), one concrete word and one abstract word in each pair, on imagery, concreteness, meaningfulness, and emotionality. Date of entry of each word into Spanish and word length were also examined. Stepwise multiple regression procedures were performed to evaluate the contribution made by each variable to over-all emotionality values. 39.06% of the emotionality variance was explained by imagery. Concreteness and meaningfulness values contributed 3.62% and 2.82%, respectively. Word length and date of entry were rejected in the final equation, as their contributions were minimal.     

Interactive visual imagery and memory search for words and pictures

In a short-term recognition memory experiment with words, subjects: (1) subvocally rehearsed the words, (2) generated a separate visual image for each word, (3) generated an interactive scene with such images, or (4) composed a covert sentence using the words in the memory set. Contrary to Seamon's (1972) results in a similar study, a serial memory search was found in all conditions, instead of the simultaneous scan which was expected when items were combined in interactive images. In a second study with pictures as stimuli, subjects who generated imaginal interactions between separate pictures, viewed interacting pictures, or viewed separate pictures also showed a serial search, i.e., longer RTs were obtained when more stimuli were held m memory. Since interactive imagery facilitated performance in an unexpected paired-associate task with memory set stimuli, one can argue that subjects actually processed or generated such interactions. It was suggested that memory search might not be simultaneous in tasks where the test stimulus constitutes only part of a memory image.