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Research on language processing requires language-specific norms of pictorial and linguistic experimental stimuli across different psycholinguistic variables. Such normative data have not yet been collected for Lebanese Arabic (LA), an Arabic dialect. Arabic languages are characterized by diglossia: while modern standard Arabic is their common means of formal communication, Arabic dialects are the medium of oral communication within each community. This claims for specific dialectal norms. Thus, the main goal of the present study was to collect normative LA data for 380 pictures taken from Cykowicz, Friedman, Rothstein, and Snodgrass (The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A 50(3):560–585; including the 260 pictures of Snodgrass & Vanderwart in Journal of experimental psychology: Human learning and memory 6(2):174–215, 1980) using a sample of 248 native LA speakers. Norms are reported for name agreement, conceptual familiarity, imageability and subjective frequency, together with word length in number of letters and syllables. We compared the obtained norms with the normative data of other Arabic dialects (Levantine, Tunisian and Gulf Arabic) and with English, French and Spanish. Results showed the distinction of LA from the other Arabic dialects. This provides support of specific dialectal Arabic norms and will allow researchers to rigorously select the stimuli to investigate language processing in LA-speaking populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effects of concreteness and grammatical class on lexical-semantic processing are well-documented, but the role of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor features of concepts in underlying mechanisms producing these effects is relatively unknown. We hypothesized that processing dissimilarities in accuracy and response time performance in nouns versus verbs, concrete versus abstract words, and their interaction can be explained by differences in semantic weight—the combined amount of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information to conceptual representations—across those grammatical and semantic categories. We assessed performance on concrete and abstract subcategories of nouns and verbs with a semantic similarity judgment task. Results showed that when main effects of concreteness and grammatical class were analyzed in more detail, the grammatical-class effect, in which nouns are processed more accurately and quicker than verbs, was only present for concrete words, not for their abstract counterparts. Moreover, the concreteness effect, measured at different levels of abstract words, was present for both nouns and verbs, but it was less pronounced for verbs. The results do not support the grammatical-class hypothesis, in which nouns and verbs are separately organized, and instead provide evidence in favor of a unitary semantic space, in which lexical-semantic processing is influenced by the beneficial effect of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information of concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of new psycholinguistic variables has been proposed during the last years within embodied cognition framework: modality experience rating (i.e., relationship between words and images of a particular perceptive modality—visual, auditory, haptic etc.), manipulability (the necessity for an object to interact with human hands in order to perform its function), vertical spatial localization. However, it is not clear how these new variables are related to each other and to such traditional variables as imageability, AoA and word frequency. In this article, normative data on the modality (visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory, and gustatory) ratings, vertical spatial localization of the object, manipulability, imageability, age of acquisition, and subjective frequency for 506 Russian nouns are presented. Strongest correlations were observed between olfactory and gustatory modalities (.81), visual modality and imageability (.78), haptic modality and manipulability (.7). Other modalities also significantly correlate with imageability: olfactory (.35), gustatory (.24), and haptic (.67). Factor analysis divided variables into four groups where visual and haptic modality ratings were combined with imageability, manipulability and AoA (the first factor); word length, frequency and AoA formed the second factor; olfactory modality was united with gustatory (the third factor); spatial localization only is included in the fourth factor. Present norms of imageability and AoA are consistent with previous as correlation analysis has revealed. The complete database can be downloaded from supplementary material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four picture-word interference experiments aimed to test the role of grammatical class in lexical production. In Experiment 1 target nouns and verbs were produced in presence of semantically unrelated distractors that could also be nouns and verbs. Participants were slower when the distractor was of the same grammatical category of the target. To rule out the semantic hypothesis that the effects were due to objects versus actions semantic dichotomy rather than to grammatical class, Experiment 2 was conducted. Participants named target verbs in presence of unrelated action nouns and verbs. The results evidenced a grammatical category effect. Finally, in Experiments 3 and 4, morphologically not derived materials were used to verify the role of morphological information. The results evidenced a syntactic effect independent from morphology. Taken together the results supported the hypothesis that grammatical class information plays a crucial role in lexical production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some research in child language suggests that semantically general verbs appear in grammatical structures earlier than semantically complex, specific ones. The present study examines whether this was the case in nouns, using imageability as a proxy measure of semantic generality. Longitudinal corpus data from 12 children from the Manchester corpus in CHILDES were used to obtain information on the first occurrence of plurals. A total of 3,560 uninflected nouns were identified in the corpora, of which 1,202 were observed in the plural. Survival analyses indicated that the chance of observing a plural form increases with the imageability rating of the noun, even after accounting for the age of acquisition of the uninflected noun, maternal input frequency, and word length. Noun imageability thus facilitates the acquisition of plural forms. This finding contradicts the observations from verbs, and indicates that the acquisition of grammar is facilitated by high imageability rather than semantic generality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the features of a corpus of naturally occurring word substitution speech errors. Words are replaced by more imageable competitors in semantic substitution errors but not in phonological substitution errors. Frequency effects in these errors are complex and the details prove difficult for any model of speech production. We argue that word frequency mainly affects phonological errors. Both semantic and phonological substitutions are constrained by phonological and syntactic similarity between the target and intrusion. We distinguish between associative and shared-feature semantic substitutions. Associative errors originate from outside the lexicon, while shared-feature errors arise within the lexicon and occur when particular properties of the targets make them less accessible than the intrusion. Semantic errors arise early while accessing lemmas from a semantic-conceptual input, while phonological errors arise late when accessing phonological forms from lemmas. Semantic errors are primarily sensitive to the properties of the semantic field involved, whereas phonological errors are sensitive to phonological properties of the targets and intrusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]