Abstract
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.
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This research was supported in part by a Faculty Development Grant from Oglethorpe University to the first author. We are grateful to Wendy McKelvey for her assistance in assembling the materials, to Katie Garrigan for her help in organizing and analyzing the data, and to Laura Bradley of the Cognition Research Laboratory at GMHI for her participation in the final data analysis.
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Kerr, N.H., Johnson, T.H. Word norms for blind and sighted subjects: Familiarity, concreteness, meaningfulness, imageability, imagery modality, and word associations. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 23, 461–485 (1991). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209988
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209988