German norms for semantic typicality, age of acquisition, and concept familiarity

The present study introduces the first substantial German database with norms for semantic typicality, age of acquisition, and concept familiarity for 824 exemplars of 11 semantic categories, including four natural (ANIMALS, BIRDS, FRUITS,: and VEGETABLES: ) and five man-made (CLOTHING, FURNITURE, VEHICLES, TOOLS: , and MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: ) categories, as well as PROFESSIONS: and SPORTS: . Each category exemplar in the database was collected empirically in an exemplar generation study. For each category exemplar, norms for semantic typicality, estimated age of acquisition, and concept familiarity were gathered in three different rating studies. Reliability data and additional analyses on effects of semantic category and intercorrelations between age of acquisition, semantic typicality, concept familiarity, word length, and word frequency are provided. Overall, the data show high inter- and intrastudy reliabilities, providing a new resource tool for designing experiments with German word materials. The full database is available in the supplementary material of this file and also at www.psychonomic.org/archive .     

The British Sign Language (BSL) norms for age of acquisition,familiarity, and iconicity

Research on signed languages offers the opportunity to address many important questions about language that it may not be possible to address via studies of spoken languages alone. Many such studies, however, are inherently limited, because there exist hardly any norms for lexical variables that have appeared to play important roles in spoken language processing. Here, we present a set of norms for age of acquisition, familiarity, and iconicity for 300 British Sign Language (BSL) signs, as rated by deaf signers, in the hope that they may prove useful to other researchers studying BSL and other signed languages. These norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Russian norms for name agreement,image agreement for the colorized version of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures and age of acquisition,conceptual familiarity,and imageability scores for modal object names

The aim of the present study was to provide Russian normative data for the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28, 516–536, 1980) colorized pictures (Rossion & Pourtois, Perception, 33, 217–236, 2004). The pictures were standardized on name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, imageability, and age of acquisition. Objective word frequency and objective visual complexity measures are also provided for the most common names associated with the pictures. Comparative analyses between our results and the norms obtained in other, similar studies are reported. The Russian norms may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society supplemental archive.     

Picture-naming norms for Canadian French: Name agreement, familiarity, visual complexity, and age of acquisition

The present study provides Canadian French normative data for 388 line drawings from the European Picture Pool for Oral Naming (Protocole européen de dénomination orale d’images; PEDOI; Kremin et al., 2003). One hundred eighty subjects were equally distributed for age group (18–39, 40–59, 60–85), educational level (low, high), and sex. They rated pictures of objects on age of acquisition, name agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Syllable length and word frequency were also taken into account. The present study suggests that age of acquisition and name agreement show significant age-related differences. These results show that unequivocal interpretation of age-related differences can be made when age-appropriate norms are used.     

Icelandic norms for the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) pictures: name and image agreement, familiarity, and age of acquisition

This paper presents Icelandic norms for the widely used pictorial stimuli of Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). Norms are presented for name agreement, familiarity, imageability, rated and objective age-of-acquisition (AoA) of vocabulary, and word frequency. The ratings were collected from 103 adult participants while the objective AoA values were collected from 279 children, 2.5-11 years of age. The present norms are in many respects similar to those already collected for other language groups indicating that the stimuli will be useful for further psychological studies in Iceland. The rated AoA values show a high correlation with objective AoA (r = 0.718) thus confirming previous studies conducted with English speaking participants that rated AoA is a relatively valid measure of objective AoA. However, word frequency and familiarity are more closely correlated with rated AoA than with objective AoA indicating that these factors play some role in the ratings. Objective AoA norms are therefore to be preferred in studies of cognitive processes.     

Dissociated imageability,concreteness, and familiarity in lateralized word recognition

According to Paivio’s (1971) dual-coding theory, the representational memory of words is indexed by familiarity ratings, whereas associated imagery (one type of referential memory) is indexed by imageability and concreteness ratings. The theory predicts that word recognition near threshold will be influenced only by the former and not by the latter two attributes. However, previous empirical findings are unclear on this issue. Furthermore, the report of some studies that imageability and concreteness interact with the visual field of presentation pose a potential challenge to the theory. Here, five experiments present lateralized words whose semantic attributes are dissociated by design and by correlational analysis. In support of the theory, a metaanalysis shows that only familiarity affects overall recognition and that none of the attributes interacts with visual field. Yet statistical power to find the effects was high, and a general right-field recognition advantage supports the hemispheric validity of the findings. Implications for continuous (e.g., “cascade”) models of information processing are discussed.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

A new set of 299 pictures for psycholinguistic studies: French norms for name agreement,image agreement,conceptual familiarity,visual complexity,image variability,age of acquisition,and naming latencies

Pictures are often used as stimuli in studies of perception, language, and memory. Since performances on different sets of pictures are generally contrasted, stimulus selection requires the use of standardized material to match pictures across different variables. Unfortunately, the number of standardized pictures available for empirical research is rather limited. The aim of the present study is to provide French normative data for a new set of 299 black-and-white drawings. Alario and Ferrand (1999) were closely followed in that the pictures were standardized on six variables: name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, visual complexity, image variability, and age of acquisition. Objective frequency measures are also provided for the most common names associated with the pictures. Comparative analyses between our results and the norms obtained in other, similar studies are reported. Finally, naming latencies corresponding to the set of pictures were also collected from French native speakers, and correlational/multiple-regression analyses were performed on naming latencies. This new set of standardized pictures is available on the Internet (http://leadserv.u-bourgogne.fr/bases/pictures/) and should be of great use to researchers when they select pictorial stimuli.     

Difficulty and familiarity norms for 192 single-solution word fragments

Normative data are presented for the probability of successfully completing 192 single-solution word fragments. Normative data on the familiarity of college students with the solution words are also given, along with estimates of word frequency from existing norms. Regression analyses were performed in order to predict fragment completion difficulty from familiarity, frequency, and several structural characteristics of the fragments. Familiarity, whether or not first and/or last letters appeared in the fragment, and the ratio of letters to missing letters in the fragment were included in the regression equation as significant predictors of difficulty for this fragment set.     

Objective age of acquisition norms for a set of 328 words in Spanish

Age of acquisition is one of the most important variables in picture naming. For this reason, a large number of findings concerning age-of-acquisition data have been published in recent years in a number of different languages. In this article, objective age-of-acquisition data in Spanish for 328 pictures were collected from a pool of 760 children, half of whom were boys and the other half girls. A total of 246 pictures were selected from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set, and 82 were new pictures. Like the results of other studies, we found that objective age of acquisition correlates less than rated age of acquisition with familiarity and frequency, which indicates that the objective measure is less contaminated by other variables than are rated estimates. A very high correlation was obtained between the norms from this study and those published in English, French, Icelandic, and Italian. These norms will be very useful to Spanish psycholinguists and clinicians. Related materials may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Eye movements,word familiarity,and vocabulary acquisition

Two experiments examined the effects of word familiarity on word recognition and text comprehension during silent reading. Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing words that varied in familiarity as assessed by printed estimates of word frequency, subjective ratings of familiarity, and a multiple‐choice test of meaning knowledge. Effects of word frequency were unaffected by differences in subjective familiarity rating for high frequency words. Differential effects of familiarity rating were observed in low frequency conditions. In addition, processing time on high and low frequency words did not differ when familiarity was held constant for moderately familiar words. Readers spent more initial processing time on novel words than familiar words. Performance on a vocabulary test administered after the reading session demonstrated that readers successfully acquired and retained new word meanings. Finally, reanalysis of word processing time as a function of vocabulary test performance demonstrated a systematic relationship between online processing patterns and memory for novel word meaning.     

British-English norms and naming times for a set of 539 pictures: The role of age of acquisition

In the present study, we presented picture-naming latencies along with ratings for a set of important characteristics of pictures and picture names: age of acquisition, frequency, picture-name agreement, name agreement, visual complexity, familiarity, and word length. The validity of these data was established by calculating correlations with previous studies. Regression analyses show that our ratings account for a larger amount of variance in RTs than do previous data. RTs were predicted by all variables except complexity and length. A complete database presenting details about all of these variables is available in the supplemental materials, downloadable from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

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.     

Estimated age of acquisition norms for 834 Portuguese nouns and their relation with other psycholinguistic variables

The main objective of this study is to report rated age of acquisition (AoA) norms for 834 nouns in Portuguese (European). AoA ratings were collected on a 7 point scale, generally following Gilhooly and Logie (1980) procedure with an 8 extra point for "don't know the word" answers. Results were analyzed considering AoA ratings and their standard deviations and considering the relationship between AoA ratings and other psycholinguistic variables (imageability, familiarity, written word frequency, concreteness, number of syllables and number of words). AoA ratings and their standard deviations were significantly and positively correlated, with early acquired word ratings showing higher agreement. Correlation and multiple regression analyses confirmed the major contribution of imageability and familiarity to AoA ratings obtained in other languages. The full database of AoA ratings and other psycholinguistic variables may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive or www.fpce.ul.pt/pessoal/ulfpfred/aoa.htm.     

Norms for two types of manipulability (graspability and functional usage), familiarity,and age of acquisition for 320 photographs of objects

There is increasing interest in the role that manipulability plays in processing objects. To date, Magnié, Besson, Poncet, and Dolisi’s (2003) manipulability ratings, based on the degree to which objects can be uniquely pantomimed, have been the reference point for many studies. However, these ratings do not fully capture some relevant dimensions of manipulability, including whether an object is graspable and the extent to which functional motor associations above and beyond graspability are present. To address this, we collected ratings of these dimensions, in addition to ratings of familiarity and age of acquisition (AoA), for a set of 320 black-and-white photographs of objects. Familiarity and AoA ratings were highly correlated with previously reported ratings of the same dimensions (r =.853, p<.001, and r=.771, p<.001, respectively), validating the present norms. Grasping and functional use ratings, in contrast, were more moderately correlated with Magnié et al.’s pantomime manipulability ratings (r=.507, p<.001). These results were taken as evidence that the new manipulability ratings collected in this research capture distinct aspects of object manipulability. The complete stimuli and norms from this study may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Age of acquisition and imageability ratings for a large set of words, including verbs and function words

Age of acquisition and imageability ratings were collected for 2,645 words, including 892 verbs and 213 function words. Words that were ambiguous as to grammatical category were disambiguated: Verbs were shown in their infinitival form, and nouns (where appropriate) were preceded by the indefinite article (such asto crack anda crack). Subjects were speakers of British English selected from a wide age range, so that differences in the responses across age groups could be compared. Within the subset of early acquired noun/verb homonyms, the verb forms were rated as later acquired than the nouns, and the verb homonyms of high-image ability nouns were rated as significantly less imageable than their noun counterparts. A small number of words received significantly earlier or later age of acquisition ratings when the 20–40 years and 50–80 years age groups were compared. These tend to comprise words that have come to be used more frequently in recent years (either through technological advances or social change), or those that have fallen out of common usage. Regression analyses showed that although word length, familiarity, and concreteness make independent contributions to the age of acquisition measure, frequency and imageability are the most important predictors of rated age of acquisition.