Timed picture naming norms for 590 pictures in Dutch

The present study presents timed norms for 590 pictures in Belgian Dutch. We determined name agreement and response latencies. Furthermore, we assessed which factors influenced the naming latencies of the pictures. It appeared that age-of-acquisition, the H-statistic (an index of name agreement), and the number of syllables of the dominant response were significant predictors of the naming latencies. These results are discussed in comparison with previous findings.     

Gulf Arabic nouns and verbs: A standardized set of 319 object pictures and 141 action pictures,with predictors of naming latencies

Standardized pictorial stimuli and predictors of successful picture naming are not readily available for Gulf Arabic. On the basis of data obtained from Qatari Arabic, a variety of Gulf Arabic, the present study provides norms for a set of 319 object pictures and a set of 141 action pictures. Norms were collected from healthy speakers, using a picture-naming paradigm and rating tasks. Norms for naming latencies, name agreement, visual complexity, image agreement, imageability, age of acquisition, and familiarity were established. Furthermore, the database includes other intrinsic factors, such as syllable length and phoneme length. It also includes orthographic frequency values (extracted from Aralex; Boudelaa & Marslen-Wilson, 2010). These factors were then examined for their impact on picture-naming latencies in object- and action-naming tasks. The analysis showed that the primary determinants of naming latencies in both nouns and verbs are (in descending order) image agreement, name agreement, familiarity, age of acquisition, and imageability. These results indicate no evidence that noun- and verb-naming processes in Gulf Arabic are influenced in different ways by these variables. This is the first database for Gulf Arabic, and therefore the norms collected from the present study will be of paramount importance for researchers and clinicians working with speakers of this variety of Arabic. Due to the similarity of the Arabic varieties spoken in the Gulf, these different varieties are grouped together under the label “Gulf Arabic” in the literature. The normative databases and the standardized pictures from this study can be downloaded from http://qufaculty.qu.edu.qa/tariq-khwaileh/download-center/.     

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.     

The word frequency effect in picture naming: contrasting two hypotheses using homonym pictures

Models of speech production disagree on whether or not homonyms have a shared word-form representation. To investigate this issue, a picture-naming experiment was carried out using Dutch homonyms of which both meanings could be presented as a picture. Naming latencies for the low-frequency meanings of homonyms were slower than for those of the high-frequency meanings. However, no frequency effect was found for control words, which matched the frequency of the homonyms' meanings. Subsequent control experiments indicated that the difference in naming latencies for the homonyms could be attributed to processes earlier than word-form retrieval. Specifically, it appears that low name agreement slowed down the naming of the low-frequency homonym pictures.     

Naming pictures at no cost: asymmetries in picture and word conditional naming

We report a striking finding about naming and categorization of pictures and reading aloud and categorization of words. The categorization of a word before reading it aloud leads to an increase in response time as compared with the condition in which naming is not conditional on the categorization of the word. Quite differently, no cost is associated with the conditional naming of pictures. Results are discussed in terms of multiple procedures operating on pictorial and verbal stimuli to retrieve phonological forms.     

Japanese normative set of 359 pictures

This study provides Japanese normative measures for 359 line drawings, including 260 pictures (44 redrawn) taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). The pictures have been standardized on voice key naming times, name agreement, age of acquisition, and familiarity. The data were compared with American, Spanish, French, and Icelandic samples reported in previous studies. In general, the correlations between variables in the present study and those in the other studies were relatively high, except for name agreement. Naming times were predicted in multiple regression analyses by name agreement. The full set of the norms and the new pictures may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

The role of functional and perceptual attributes: evidence from picture naming in dementia

We examined the performance of a group of people with moderately severe Alzheimer's type dementia on a naming task. We found that functional information plays an important role in determining naming performance on both living and non-living things. Perceptual information may play some role in naming living things. We also found some evidence that the semantic category to which an item belongs may also have some effect on naming performance. We argue that both the sensory-functional and domain-specific knowledge hypotheses may be correct: the brain is to some organized on taxonomic grounds, while the semantic representations of living and non-living things depend differentially on perceptual and functional information. These representations can be differentially disrupted by damage to modality-specific stores. At a moderate level of severity, dementia causes global damage that has the effect of disrupting both the localized taxonomic and the modality-specific stores. We discuss the nature of functional information.     

The role of age of acquisition in picture and word naming in dyslexic adults

To date, there has been numerous reports that early acquired pictures and words are named faster than late acquired pictures and words in normal reading but it is not established whether age of acquisition (AoA) has the same impact on adult dyslexic naming, especially in a transparent orthography such as Turkish. Independent ratings were obtained for AoA, frequency, name agreement, and object familiarity in Turkish for all items in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart line drawing set. Dyslexic (N= 15) and non-dyslexic (N= 15) university undergraduates were asked to name 30 early acquired and 30 late acquired pictures and picture names standardized and selected from these norms. As predicted, there were main effects for (a) AoA with reaction times (RTs) for Early items named faster than Late items, (b) reader status with non-dyslexic students faster than dyslexic students, and (c) stimuli types with pictures named slower than words. A two-way interaction between reader status and stimuli type was also significant. Implications of the results for theoretical frameworks of AoA within the cognitive architecture and normal and impaired models of reading are discussed.     

Perceptual identification thresholds for 150 fragmented pictures from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set

This paper reports perceptual identification thresholds for 150 pictures from the 1980 Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set. These pictures were fragmented and presented on the Apple Macintosh microcomputer in a picture-fragment completion task in which identification thresholds were obtained at three phases of learning: Train (initial presentation), New (initial presentation after training on a different set), and Old (repeated presentation of the Train set). Pictures were divided into five sets of two subsets of 15 pictures each, which served alternately as the Train and New sets. A total of 100 subjects participated in the task, with 10 subjects assigned to each subset. Individual thresholds for each picture at each phase of learning are presented, along with the fragmented pictures identified by 35% of the subjects across the Train and New learning phases. This set of fragmented pictures is provided for use in experiments in which a single level of fragmented image is presented for identification after a priming phase. Correlations between the Snodgrass and Vanderwart norms and identification thresholds at the three phases of learning are also reported.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in novel picture naming: A laboratory analogue

Age-of-acquisition (AoA) effects are such that early-acquired items are more quickly recognized and produced than later acquired items. In this laboratory analogue, participants were trained to name a group of Greeble pictures with a novel nonsense name. We manipulated order of acquisition of the stimuli: Half of the stimuli were presented from the onset of training (early acquired) whilst the other half were introduced later in the training schedule (late acquired). At test, when early and late stimuli had equal cumulative frequency, early stimuli were named significantly faster than late items. In a second test, it was also found that visual duration thresholds were significantly smaller for the early items when participants were asked to name the critical items. These findings support the notion that order-of-acquisition effects can be manifest over a short time span in the laboratory, and that the effect of order of acquisition is distinct from mere frequency of exposure. The findings are consistent with the idea that AoA effects occurring over a large temporal scale may be a special case of more general order-of-acquisition effects, and both may be a general property of learning mechanisms.     

A set of 265 pictures standardized for studies of the cognitive processing of temporal and causal order information

Planning, predicting, reasoning, and acting often depend crucially on the correct encoding and application of knowledge concerning the temporal and causal ordering of events. Yet no pictorial stimulus set is optimized for investigating the processing of temporal and causal order information. We introduce a novel stimulus set of 265 black-and-white line drawings depicting a diverse array of recognizable events. Most of the images in the stimulus set (N?=?222) share a thematic or conceptual association with one other image in the set, and the stimuli were created and extensively normed such that the image pairs vary in the degrees to which they share a causal, ordered relation with one another. The stimuli were standardized in a series of normative tasks, including concept/noun/verb agreement, perceived frequency, visual similarity, and indexes of three features of causal associations between events (i.e., temporal proximity, exclusivity, and priority). Both younger adults (ages 18–30 years) and older adults (ages 60–80 years) contributed normative data, allowing for broad applications of the stimuli to the study of normal and age-related changes in the encoding, retention, and retrieval of information regarding temporal and causal order. Complete normative data sets are available in the online supplemental materials, and the full stimulus set is available by contacting the first author.     

Determinants of naming latencies, object comprehension times, and new norms for the Russian standardized set of the colorized version of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures

We report object-naming and object recognition times collected from Russian native speakers for the colorized version of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 6:174–215, 1980) pictures (Rossion & Pourtois, Perception 33:217–236, 2004). New norms for image variability, body–object interaction [BOI], and subjective frequency collected in Russian, as well as new name agreement scores for the colorized pictures in French, are also reported. In both object-naming and object comprehension times, the name agreement, image agreement, and age-of-acquisition variables made significant independent contributions. Objective word frequency was reliable in object-naming latencies only. The variables of image variability, BOI, and subjective frequency were not significant in either object naming or object comprehension. Finally, imageability was reliable in both tasks. The new norms and object-naming and object recognition times are provided as supplemental materials.     

A standardized set of 260 pictures for Modern Greek: Norms for name agreement, age of acquisition, and visual complexity

The appropriate selection of both pictorial and linguistic experimental stimuli requires a previous languagespecific standardization process of the materials across different variables. Considering that such normative data have not yet been collected for Modern Greek, in this study normative data for the color version of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set (Rossion & Pourtois, 2004) were collected from 330 native Greek adults. Participants named the pictures (providing name agreement ratings) and rated them for visual complexity and age of acquisition. The obtained measures represent a useful tool for further research on Greek language processing and constitute the first picture normative study for this language. The picture norms from this study and previous ones may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

A role for set when naming Arabic numerals: How intentionality limits (putatively automatic) performance

Processing in various skilled domains is often described as automatic, in the sense that functional stimulus processing is triggered by stimulus onset and cannot be interrupted. One problem is that subjects typically know what task they have to perform prior to stimulus presentation. Various effects attributed to automatic processing may, therefore, arise instead from the mental set that is already in place. In the present study, we investigated skilled subjects’ ability to engage in processing prior to knowing what the task is. A numeral was presented, and subjects either named it or added 1 and named the result. Which task was to be performed on a trial was signaled by a tone that appeared before or at the same time as the target. If functional target processing is triggered by its presentation, the effect of low contrast should be absorbed into the time taken to decode the task cue, regardless of the task (the effect of contrast should be absent at the 0-msec stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA] and present when task information is given in advance of the target). An underadditive interaction between contrast and SOA was seen for one task, but these factors had additive effects in the other task. This pattern can be understood in terms of the hypothesis that although encoding can be thought of as a stage common to both tasks, it is not, in the present context, functionally independent of a subsequent stage unique to a task.     

The locus of taboo context effects in picture naming

Speakers respond more slowly when naming pictures presented with taboo (i.e., offensive/embarrassing) than with neutral distractor words in the picture–word interference paradigm. Over four experiments, we attempted to localize the processing stage at which this effect occurs during word production and determine whether it reflects the socially offensive/embarrassing nature of the stimuli. Experiment 1 demonstrated taboo interference at early stimulus onset asynchronies of ?150?ms and 0?ms although not at 150?ms. In Experiment 2, taboo distractors sharing initial phonemes with target picture names eliminated the interference effect. Using additive factors logic, Experiment 3 demonstrated that taboo interference and phonological facilitation effects do not interact, indicating that the two effects originate at different processing levels within the speech production system. In Experiment 4, interference was observed for masked taboo distractors, including those sharing initial phonemes with the target picture names, indicating that the effect cannot be attributed to a processing level involving responses in an output buffer. In two of the four experiments, the magnitude of the interference effect correlated significantly with arousal ratings of the taboo words. However, no significant correlations were found for either offensiveness or valence ratings. These findings are consistent with a locus for the taboo interference effect prior to the processing stage responsible for word form encoding. We propose a pre-lexical account in which taboo distractors capture attention at the expense of target picture processing due to their high arousal levels.     

A set of 254 Snodgrass-Vanderwart pictures standardized for Spanish: Norms for name agreement,image agreement,familiarity, and visual complexity

The Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) picture set was standardized for a Spanish sample (N = 261). The present article shows the main results, but more explicitly, it shows the differences between English and Spanish data. This evidence justifies the statement that normative data of cognitive stimuli cannot be taken into another language directly, because object names that are very common in one language may not be so in another, or objects that have a specific name in one language may have a generic name in another, and so on. Finally, because of the potential usefulness of the data for bilingualism studies, the Spanish data are presented jointly with the English data.     

Predictors of timed picture naming in Chinese

We report normative data collected from Mainland Chinese speakers for 232 objects taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). These data include adult ratings of concept familiarity, age of acquisition (AoA), printedword frequency, and word length (in syllables), as well as measures of rated visual complexity, image agreement, and name agreement. We then examined timed picture naming of these objects with native Chinese speakers in Beijing in two experiments using line drawings and colored pictures. In both experiments, the variables name agreement, rated concept familiarity, and AoA made significant independent contributions to naming latency in multiple regression analyses. We observed a correlation ofr=.85 between naming latency with line drawings and colored pictures and a reduced effect of image agreement on naming when colored pictures were presented. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of lexical processing in Chinese. Normative data for 232 Chinese nouns may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive     

Predictors of timed picture naming in Persian

In this study, we report normative data by native Persian speakers for concept familiarity, age of acquisition (AoA), imageability, image agreement, name agreement, and visual complexity, as well as values for word frequency, word length, and naming latency for 200 of the colored Snodgrass and Vanderwart (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 6:174-215, 1980) pictures created by Rossion and Pourtois (Perception 33:217-236, 2004). Using multiple regression analysis, we found independent effects of name agreement, image agreement, word frequency, and AoA on picture naming by native Persian speakers from Iran. We concluded that the psycholinguistic properties identified in studies of picture naming in many other languages also predict timed picture naming in Persian. Normative data for the ratings and picture-naming latencies for the 200 Persian object nouns are provided as an Excel file in the Supplemental materials.     

Determinants of picture naming times in Icelandic

Numerous studies have found that word frequency has a significant effect on the time it takes to name an object or read a word. Recently, claims have been made that this frequency effect is perhaps more correctly interpreted as an age of acquisition effect. This paper reports an experiment in which naming times in Icelandic for 175 stimuli from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set were determined. A multiple regression analysis of naming times against a number of independent factors showed that objective age of acquisition was the strongest predictor of naming time, with familiarity and name agreement also showing a significant effect. The effect of word frequency was, however, not significant. Possible reasons for this are discussed.