Noun imageability and the processing of sensory-based information.

The aim of this study was to test whether the availability of internal imagery elicited by words is related to ratings of word imageability. Participants are presented with target words and, after a delay allowing for processing of the word, answer questions regarding the size or weight of the word referents. Target words differ with respect to imageability. Results show faster responses to questions for high imageability words than for low imageability words. The type of question (size/weight) modulates reaction times suggesting a dominance of the visual domain over the physical-experience domain in concept representation. Results hold across two different languages (Czech/German). These findings provide further insights into the representations underlying word meaning and the role of word imageability in language acquisition and processing.

Corpus-based age of word acquisition: Does it support the validity of adult age-of-acquisition ratings?

Age of acquisition (AoA) is presumed to reflect the age or relative order in which words are learned, but is often measured using adult ratings or adult-reported observations and might thus reflect more about the adult language than about the acquisition process. Objective AoA estimates are often limited to words whose referents can be shown in pictures. We created a corpus-derived AoA estimate based on first word occurrences in a longitudinal corpus of child English, and evaluated its reliability and validity against other measures of AoA. Then we used these different measures as concurrent predictors of adult lexical decision times. Our results showed adequate reliability and good relations with other AoA measures, especially with parent-reported AoA (r = 0.56). Corpus AoA did not predict unique variance in lexical decision times, while adult AoA ratings and parent-reported AoA did. We argue that this pattern is due to two factors. First, the adult AoA ratings and parent-reported AoA are confounded with adult memory, lexical processing and reading difficulty variables. Second, the adult AoA ratings are related to actual age of acquisition only for words acquired during later preschool and school age. Our analyses support the utility of corpus-derived AoA estimates as an objective measure of acquisition age, especially for early-acquired words.

The Multilingual Picture Database.

The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.