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Imageability, an important word characteristic in the psycholinguistic literature, is typically assessed by asking participants to estimate the ease with which a word can evoke a mental image. Our aim was to explore inter-rater disagreement in normative imageability ratings. We examined the predictors of variability around average imageability ratings for young, middle-aged and older adults (Study 1) and assessed its impact on visual word recognition performance in young adults (Study 2). Analyses of French age-related imageability ratings (Ballot et al., Behavior Research Methods, 54, 196–215, 2022) revealed that inter-rater disagreement around the average imageability value was critically high for most words within the imageability norms, thus questioning the construct validity of the average rating for the most variable items. Variability in ratings changed between age groups (18-25, 26-40, 41-59, and over 60 years) and was associated with words that are longer, less frequent, learnt later in life and less emotional (Study 1). To examine the consequences of elevated standard deviations around the average imageability rating on visual word recognition, we entered this factor in a hierarchical regression alongside classic lexico-semantic predictors. The effect of word-imageability on young adults’ lexical decision times (Ferrand et al., Behavior Research Methods, 50, 1285–1307, 2018) remained significant after accounting for inter-rater disagreement in imageability ratings, even when considering the least consensual words (Study 2). We conclude that imageability ratings reliably predict visual word recognition performance in young adults for large datasets, but might require caution for smaller ones. Given imageability rating differences across adulthood, further research investigating age-related differences in language processing is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A train station may be seen as an anecdote about the history and evolution of a city, a system of interaction between human groups, a space for the production and provision of services, a place of collective consumption and linked decisions, an arena of physical vigor, or a field of conflict. What draws the attention of this study toward train stations is the shifting interest of urban policymakers and governance authorities from automobile-dependent unsustainable cities towards public transit-oriented sustainable cities. Therefore, academic attention needs to be paid to the cognitive characteristics of train stations and the implication of those characteristics on the practices that consider stations as an inevitable ingredient of urban development. This research addresses the intuitive question of how train stations, the cognitive value associated with them, and the importance of this value as obligatory constituents of decisions can affect urban policy formulation and allocation of resources. The present endeavor is grounded on the objective of making a general theoretical argument about the relevance and responsiveness of train stations to the history and functioning of urban places, the consequent human cognitive value attached to them and the possible role of this value in a specific set of actions, i.e. rail-based transit-oriented development. This objective guided the fundamental argument of this research: the cognitive importance of railway stations as identity-makers of urban landscape must be acknowledged by the contemporary urban development practices that consider train stations as catalysts of socially inclusive, economically viable and environmentally sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its importance to everyday functioning, reasoning is underexplored in developmental dyslexia. The current study investigated verbal deductive reasoning on the Wason selection task, not previously used in dyslexia research despite its well-established pedigree. Reasoning rule was manipulated, with the conditional rules varying in the logical values presented. The word frequency and imageability of the word terms was also manipulated. Twenty-six adults with dyslexia and 31 adults without dyslexia completed Wason selection task problems. No group difference in reasoning accuracy or completion time was found. However, the participants were most accurate when reasoning with the rule type "If p, then not q" and least accurate with the rule type "If p then q". More trials were also answered correctly when the word terms were highly imageable but of average word frequency. These findings are in line with the general reasoning literature. Dyslexia status did not interact with either rule type or word term type. The study expands upon previous research by testing verbal deductive reasoning in dyslexia, highlighting the role of imageability in facilitating reasoning performance for all, regardless of the presence or absence of dyslexia. Implications for the design of educational materials are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lynch's (1960) Theory of Imageability explores how individuals perceive and navigate urban environments, emphasizing the role of paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. This theory highlights the significance of these elements in shaping people's mental maps and enhancing their understanding and navigation of urban spaces. However, cultural tourism introduces complexities to Lynch's framework due to its unique motivations, interests, and behaviours. This article investigates the relationship between visitor mobility patterns and urban morphology in the context of two cultural destinations: Bilbao and San Sebastian. The study utilizes Network Analysis of visitors' GPS data to analyse the dynamics of visitor mobility within these urban environments. This data-driven approach facilitates a comprehensive understanding of how cultural destinations operate within their physical territories. Results reveal that both San Sebastian and Bilbao exhibit a distinct "D-shaped" mobility pattern, characterized by a clear and uncomplicated flow of movement. This finding aligns with Lynch's theory (1960), emphasizing the importance of simplicity and legibility in shaping visitors' cognitive maps and mental representations of the urban space. The concentration of cultural landmarks in the Old Town and the challenges of congestion and overtourism are brought to light through the network analysis of GPS data. The accompanying figures visually illustrate how the ease of navigation in these cities significantly contributes to the formation of visitors' cognitive maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our main objective was to analyze the role of imageability in relation to the age of acquisition (AoA) of nouns and verbs in Spanish-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS) and their peers with typical development (TD). The AoA of nouns and verbs was determined using the MacArthur-Bates CDIs adapted to the profile of children with DS. The AoA was analyzed using a linear mixed-effect model, including factors of imageability, group, and word class, and controlling for word frequency and word length. This analysis showed that high imaginable and short words were acquired early. Children with DS acquired the words later than TD peers. An interaction between imageability and group indicated that the effect of imageability was greater in the DS group. We discuss this effect considering DS children's phonological memory difficulties. The overall results confirm the role that imageability and word length play in lexical acquisition, an effect that goes beyond word class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION: Patients with Alzheimer's disease present with difficulty in lexical retrieval and reversal of the concreteness effect in nouns. Little is known about the phenomena before the onset of symptoms. We anticipate early linguistic signs in the speech of people who suffer from amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Here, we report the results of a corpus‐linguistic approach to the early detection of cognitive impairment. METHODS: One hundred forty‐eight English‐speaking Singaporeans provided natural speech data, on topics of their choice; 74 were diagnosed with single‐domain MCI (38 amnestic, 36 non‐amnestic), 74 cognitively healthy. The recordings yield 267,310 words, which are tagged for parts of speech. We calculate the per‐minute word counts and concreteness scores of all tagged words, nouns, and verbs in the dataset. RESULTS: Compared to controls, subjects with amnestic MCI produce fewer but more abstract nouns. Verbs are not affected. DISCUSSION: Slower retrieval of nouns and the reversal of the concreteness effect in nouns are manifested in natural speech and can be detected early through corpus‐based analysis. Highlights: Reversal of the concreteness effect is manifested in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and semantic dementia.The paper reports a corpus‐based analysis of natural speech by people with amnestic and non‐amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and cognitively healthy controls.People with amnestic MCI produce fewer and more abstract nouns than people with non‐amnestic MCI and healthy controls. Verbs appear to be unaffected.The imageability problem can be detected in natural everyday speech by people with amnestic MCI, which carries a higher risk of conversion to AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have investigated the effects of word frequency (WF), age of acquisition (AoA), and animacy on picture naming in volunteers and those with aphasia. But none have controlled for any possible interactions among these three variables during noun retrieval and whether WF and AoA influence verb retrieval in ways that are similar to that observed during noun retrieval. The main purpose of this study was to examine the influences of WF, AoA, and animacy on noun retrieval in both volunteers and participants with aphasia and to compare these results to the effects of AoA and WF in both groups during verb retrieval. A factorial approach was used to study the effects of (a) WF, AoA, and animacy on picture naming for 249 nouns, and (b) the effects of WF and AoA on picture naming for 88 verbs. Fifteen volunteers with no history of neurologic or psychiatric impairment and 13 people with aphasia participated in this study. Naming latencies using key press procedures were used to assess the effects of the independent variables. Linear mixed effects with random intercepts were modeled to analyze the results. Nouns with early AoA and high WF were named significantly faster than all nouns with late AoA. There were no differences between naming speeds for animate vs. inanimate nouns. Animate nouns with early AoA and high frequency were named significantly faster than early, animate nouns with low frequency. Low word frequency facilitated naming by the participants with aphasia for early AoA verbs but slowed the volunteers' naming for these verbs. Participants responded significantly faster to nouns versus verbs regardless of AoA and WF. Controlling for animacy in noun picture naming produces novel findings regarding the effects of WF and AoA on word retrieval. The interaction among WF, AoA, and animacy is more consequential for picture naming speed than the specific effects of any one of these variables alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to obtain comprehensive data on the difficulty level of kun‐reading (native Japanese reading) of Japanese kanji (Chinese characters adapted for Japanese) learned in junior high and high school. Drawing from an item‐based analysis, it explored the word variables related to the difficulty level of kun‐reading. A reading test comprising 645 kun‐readings of common kanji learned in junior high and high school was administered to 123 university students. Tobit regressions were conducted for the total, okurigana (phonetic kana letters suffix written after kanji), and single kanji items, using the word variables as independent variables and the reading accuracy as the dependent variable. Significant positive contributions were observed for imageability and word frequency for all item categories, kun‐reading ratio for the single kanji items, and okurigana ratio for the total items. A significant negative contribution was observed for okurigana neighborhood size for the okurigana items. The results highlighted the need for education focusing on the meanings of kanji characters, and for a language policy for the use of the okurigana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract INTRODUCTION Patients with Alzheimer's disease present with difficulty in lexical retrieval and reversal of the concreteness effect in nouns. Little is known about the phenomena before the onset of symptoms. We anticipate early linguistic signs in the speech of people who suffer from amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Here, we report the results of a corpus‐linguistic approach to the early detection of cognitive impairment. METHODS One hundred forty‐eight English‐speaking Singaporeans provided natural speech data, on topics of their choice; 74 were diagnosed with single‐domain MCI (38 amnestic, 36 non‐amnestic), 74 cognitively healthy. The recordings yield 267,310 words, which are tagged for parts of speech. We calculate the per‐minute word counts and concreteness scores of all tagged words, nouns, and verbs in the dataset. RESULTS Compared to controls, subjects with amnestic MCI produce fewer but more abstract nouns. Verbs are not affected. DISCUSSION Slower retrieval of nouns and the reversal of the concreteness effect in nouns are manifested in natural speech and can be detected early through corpus‐based analysis. Highlights Reversal of the concreteness effect is manifested in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and semantic dementia. The paper reports a corpus‐based analysis of natural speech by people with amnestic and non‐amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and cognitively healthy controls. People with amnestic MCI produce fewer and more abstract nouns than people with non‐amnestic MCI and healthy controls. Verbs appear to be unaffected. The imageability problem can be detected in natural everyday speech by people with amnestic MCI, which carries a higher risk of conversion to AD.

In the present study, we developed affective (valence and arousal) and sensory–motor (concreteness and imageability) norms for 210 English idioms rated by native English speakers (L1) and English second-language speakers (L2). Based on internal consistency analyses, the ratings were found to be highly reliable. Furthermore, we explored various relations within the collected measures (valence, arousal, concreteness, and imageability) and between these measures and some available psycholinguistic norms (familiarity, literal plausibility, and decomposability) for the same set of idioms. The primary findings were that (i) valence and arousal showed the typical U-shape relation, for both L1 and L2 data; (ii) idioms with more negative valence were rated as more arousing; (iii) the majority of idioms were rated as either positive or negative with only 4 being rated as neutral; (iv) familiarity correlated positively with valence and arousal; (v) concreteness and imageability showed a strong positive correlation; and (vi) the ratings of L1 and L2 speakers significantly differed for arousal and concreteness, but not for valence and imageability. We discuss our interpretation of these observations with reference to the literature on figurative language processing (both single words and idioms). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word frequency is one of the best predictors of language processing. Typically, word frequency norms are entirely based on natural-language text data, thus representing what the literature typically refers to as purely linguistic experience. This study presents Flickr frequency norms as a novel word frequency measure from a domain-specific corpus inherently tied to extra-linguistic information: words used as image tags on social media. To obtain Flickr frequency measures, we exploited the photo-sharing platform Flickr Image (containing billions of photos) and extracted the number of uploaded images tagged with each of the words considered in the lexicon. Here, we systematically examine the peculiarities of Flickr frequency norms and show that Flickr frequency is a hybrid metrics, lying at the intersection between language and visual experience and with specific biases induced by being based on image-focused social media. Moreover, regression analyses indicate that Flickr frequency captures additional information beyond what is already encoded in existing norms of linguistic, sensorimotor, and affective experience. Therefore, these new norms capture aspects of language usage that are missing from traditional frequency measures: a portion of language usage capturing the interplay between language and vision, which – this study demonstrates – has its own impact on word processing. The Flickr frequency norms are openly available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/2zfs3/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genesis of the historical core of the city of Split, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, rests on the continuity of urban life. The city has been subject to constant change over the course of almost two millennia, transforming from an ancient imperial palace into today's city. The ever-changing urban landscape implies the need for a continual dialogue between old and new, especially considering the efforts made throughout history to develop a new image of the city. By analysing three examples—Milesi Palace from the Baroque period, Bajamonti Palace from the age of Classicism, and Nakić Palace from the Secession period, all national heritage listed buildings, the significance of the urban logic behind their construction, as well as the impact these buildings had on the image of the city, is established. All three buildings are located on the perimeter of the city's public zone, and in different periods, they established new sets of urban rules, which they hold to this day. By researching their influence on the formation of Split's urban tissue on their immediate and wider surroundings, their role in the city-building process is defined, thus revealing their impact on the formation of the urbanscape, as well as the relationships between architectural heritage and the city's transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic richness theory predicts that words with richer, more distinctive semantic representations should facilitate performance in a word recognition memory task. We investigated the contribution of multiple aspects of sensorimotor experience--those relating to the body, communication, food, and objects--to word recognition memory, by analyzing megastudy data in a series of hierarchical linear regressions. We found that different forms of sensorimotor experience produced different effects on memory. While stronger grounding in object- and food-related experience facilitated word memory performance as expected for semantic richness, experience relating to communication did not. Critically, sensorimotor experience relating to the body impaired rather than facilitated recognition memory by inflating false alarms, which was not consistent with the idea that semantically richer representations are more memorable. Additionally, we found that pure imageability (i.e., consciously generating mental imagery, distinct from sensorimotor experience) contributes to semantic richness effects on word memory but with much smaller effect sizes than previously reported, once sensorimotor grounding was taken into account. These results suggest that word recognition memory is often but not consistently facilitated by rich semantic representations and that it is essential to separately consider distinct forms of sensorimotor experience rather than assuming more information is always better. The findings have implications for the use of semantic variables in memory research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imageability has been shown to be one of the critical psycholinguistic variables that help us understand lexical processing across many languages, but it is a less studied variable in non-alphabetic Chinese with a large population of native speakers. The present study sought to build up the first large-scale imageability database for Chinese by collecting imageability ratings for 10,426 Chinese two-character words from the Common Lexical Database for Compulsory Education in China. A total of 415 native Mandarin speakers from mainland China participated in the ratings, with an average of 22 participants rating the imageability of each word on a 7-point scale. The results supported the high reliability and validity of the present imageability ratings. Furthermore, the current work examined the contribution of the imageability ratings to Chinese lexical processing while controlling for existing psycholinguistic variables, including concreteness, age of acquisition (AoA), valence, and arousal, as well as other lexical variables such as word frequency. The results suggest the additional explanatory power of imageability to Chinese lexical processing after controlling for the aforementioned variables. Interestingly, further analysis revealed that concreteness, which is thought to be similar to imageability, explained a smaller amount of variance in Chinese lexical processing compared to imageability. Therefore, the findings point to the important contribution of imageability to Chinese lexical processing and its advantage over concreteness. The current imageability database is downloadable in the supplemental materials, thus open to all researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several norms of psycholinguistic features of Chinese characters exist in Mandarin Chinese, but only a few are available in Cantonese or in the traditional script, and none includes semantic radical transparency ratings. This study presents subjective ratings of age-of-acquisition (AoA), familiarity, imageability, concreteness, and semantic radical transparency in 4376 Chinese characters. The single Chinese characters were rated individually on the five dimensions by 20 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong to form the Hong Kong Chinese Character Psycholinguistic Norms (HKCCPN). The split-half reliability and intra-class correlations testified to the high internal reliability of the ratings. Their convergent and discriminant patterns in relations to other psycholinguistic measures echoed previous findings reported on Chinese. There were high correlations for semantic radical transparency, imageability and concreteness, and moderate-to-high correlations for AoA and familiarity among subsets of items that had been collected in previous studies. Concurrent validity analyses showed convergence in predicting behavioral response times in various tasks (lexical decision, naming, and writing-to-dictation) when compared with other Chinese character databases. High predictive validity was shown in writing-to-dictation data from an independent sample of 20 native Cantonese speakers. Several objective psycholinguistic measures (character frequency, stroke number, number of words formed, number of homophones and number of meanings) were included in this database to facilitate its use. These new ratings extend the currently available norms in language and reading research in Cantonese Chinese for researchers, clinicians, and educators, as well as provide them with a wider choice of stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we present the first database of pictures and their corresponding psycholinguistic norms for Polish: the CLT database. In this norming study, we used the pictures from Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLT): a set of colored drawings of 168 object and 146 actions. The CLT pictures were carefully created to provide a valid tool for multicultural comparisons. The pictures are accompanied by norms for Naming latencies, Name agreement, Goodness of depiction, Image agreement, Concept familiarity, Age of acquisition, Imageability, Lexical frequency, and Word complexity. We also report analyses of predictors of Naming latencies for pictures of objects and actions. Our results show that Name agreement, Concept familiarity, and Lexical frequency are significant predictors of Naming latencies for pictures of both objects and actions. Additionally, Age of acquisition significantly predicts Naming latencies of pictures of objects. The CLT database is freely available at osf.io/gp9qd. The full set of CLT pictures, including additional variants of pictures, is available on request at osf.io/y2cwr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In opaque orthographies, such as English, children with low reading skills tend to rely more on semantic information due to their inadequate acquisition of sub‐lexical knowledge. This tendency has also been reported for kanji, a non‐alphabetic and opaque Japanese orthography. However, previous studies on this phenomenon have had methodological limitations, such as a small number of stimuli in reading tests and insufficient investigation of a consistency effect. This study addressed these limitations and aimed to clarify whether Japanese children with low reading accuracy are characterised by a stronger reliance on semantic information and a smaller contribution to the reading process based on character‐to‐sound correspondences to the kanji word‐reading performance than children with high reading accuracy in reading kanji words. Methods: A total of 129 Japanese students in the fifth and sixth grades participated in this study, and 11 of them had been previously diagnosed with developmental dyslexia. They read an experimenter‐created list of kanji words. We tested how frequency, imageability and consistency of character‐to‐sound correspondences affected children's reading accuracy and error types and how the effects of these variables were modulated by reading accuracy level. Results: For children with lower reading accuracy, the frequency and consistency effects on reading accuracy decreased, whereas the imageability effect was stronger. Children with low reading accuracy frequently did not respond, whereas children with high reading accuracy made word substitution and legitimate alternative reading of component (LARC) errors frequently. Conclusions: The reading processing of children with low reading accuracy is characterised by a stronger reliance on semantic information and a smaller contribution of a reading process based on character‐to‐sound correspondences to reading performance than that of children with high reading accuracy. Reading characteristics of children with low reading accuracy might be due to their inadequate lexical and sub‐word knowledge. Highlights: What is already known about this topicJapanese children with developmental dyslexia show a larger imageability effect than children without reading deficits, thus suggesting a heavier reliance on semantic information when reading kanji words (Akashi et al., 2013).Compared with Japanese children without reading deficits, Japanese children with developmental dyslexia frequently make two types of errors: word substitution errors (i.e. reading a target word as another word) and no response (Akashi et al., 2013).The percentage of legitimate alternative reading of component (LARC) errors in Japanese children with developmental dyslexia was lower compared with their peers without reading deficits, which suggests a lack of sub‐word knowledge, that is, character‐to‐sound correspondences (Akashi et al., 2013). What this paper addsIn addition to a larger imageability effect and fewer LARC errors, the reading performance of children with low reading scores was characterised by smaller effects of frequency and consistency on reading accuracy compared with children with high reading scores.In addition to LARC errors, children with high reading scores made word substitution errors more frequently than those with low reading scores, which is inconsistent with Akashi et al. (2013).This study showed that a process using semantic information and one based on character‐to‐sound correspondences could affect reading accuracy in Japanese children. Implications for theory, policy or practiceThis study elucidated the kanji word‐reading characteristics of children with low reading scores. The results will enable teachers to identify children who have difficulty reading kanji words based on their reading characteristics.Our findings suggest that we should develop kanji word‐reading interventions to improve sub‐word and lexical reading skills in Japanese children with low reading accuracy because their reading characteristics are mostly affected by a lack of orthography–phonology correspondences at the word and sub‐word levels. To improve sub‐word reading skills, teachers can teach multiple pronunciations of each character and which pronunciation of a character is the most frequent among compound words with the character. To improve lexical reading skills, focusing on orthography–phonology and orthography–semantics associations at the word level by looking at a printed word, pronouncing it and saying its meaning multiple times may be helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Wakeful resting and listening to music are powerful means to modulate memory. How these activities affect memory when directly compared has not been tested so far. In two experiments, participants encoded and immediately recalled two word lists followed by either 6 min wakefully resting or 6 min listening to music. The results of Experiment 1 show that both post-encoding conditions have a similar effect on memory after 1 day. In Experiment 2, we explored the possibility that less concrete words, i.e. lower in imageability than in Experiment 1, are differently affected by the two post-encoding conditions. The results of Experiment 2 show that, when words are less concrete, more words are retained after 1 day when encoding is followed by wakeful resting rather than listening to music. These findings indicate that the effects of wakeful resting and listening to music on memory consolidation are moderated by the concreteness of the encoded material.

This paper describes and analyses the imageability and the perceptual portraits of the (post-)socialist large-scale housing estates in Kyiv in the eyes of young people (university students). The research is based on the analysis of Lynch-type mental maps focusing on urban vernacular districts among the other their principal elements. The results show that mass housing areas still constitute an important part of the city's image. However, apparently similar neighbourhoods differ significantly in terms of their imageability and likeability depending on their location in the city and the trajectory of the post-socialist development. Consequently, individual approaches to positive image change based on the complex evaluation of development factors are needed to response the challenges faced by the different types of the (post-)socialist mass housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strongest formulations of grounded cognition assume that perceptual intuitions about concepts involve the re-activation of sensorimotor experience we have made with their referents in the world. Within this framework, concreteness and imageability ratings are indeed of crucial importance by operationalising the amount of perceptual interaction we have made with objects. Here we tested such an assumption by asking whether visual intuitions about concepts are provided accurately even when direct visual experience is absent. To this aim, we considered concreteness and imageability intuitions in blind people and tested whether these judgments are predicted by Image-based Frequency (IF, i.e. a data-driven estimate approximating the availability of the word referent in the visual environment). Results indicated that IF predicts perceptual intuitions with a larger extent in sighted compared to blind individuals, thus suggesting a role of direct experience in shaping our judgements. However, the effect of IF was significant not only in sighted but also in blind individuals. This indicates that having direct visual experience with objects does not play a critical role in making them concrete and imageable in a person’s intuitions: people do not need visual experience to develop intuition about the availability of things in the external visual environment and use this intuition to inform concreteness/imageability judgments. Our findings fit closely the idea that perceptual judgments are the outcome of introspection/abstraction tasks invoking high-level conceptual knowledge that is not necessarily acquired via direct perceptual experience.

Folktales are increasingly recognized as potent enablers in evoking the 'genius loci' of cities and sustaining their cultural identity. 'The Thousand and One Nights' represents the most remarkable and memorable cross-cultural folktales, related to the Middle Eastern region in general, and the city of Baghdad in particular. Very limited research has been conducted on its impact on architecture and urban development. The current article aims to develop a conceptual framework for the notion of 'imageability', by which to explore the spatial characteristics and the physical and spiritual attributes of the depicted architecture and urban spaces of selected tales. Based on a conducted narrative-analysis approach, the article introduces an innovative theoretical-driven method to folktale interpretation and visualization. This method provides a new perspective in highlighting the perceptual and cognitive implications of the tales in defining the structure, identity and meaning of the urban context, thereby accentuating their potential role as ever-lasting resources that can revive the imageability of Baghdad city, maintain its essence, and sustain its cultural identity.

A window view affects a person's well-being and comfort. The effect of visual contact with nature on people depends on the quality of the outside scenery, which in turn depends on parameters such as the number of visible layers, the distance to visual elements and environmental information (content) in the window view. Many studies have concluded that views of nature are preferable, while in urban environments a high-quality window view should include greenery. In our study, a survey was conducted among two groups of students at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, to find out how the respondents perceived urban imageability in a window view. Using the example of five neighborhoods in Ljubljana (Slovenia), which have different urban planning and design concepts and greeneries, we investigated whether respondents perceived the presence of greenery as an important element of visual comfort. They ranked the quality of window views using eight indicators. The analysis of the ranking of the answers showed that the responses were similar for the two survey approaches (with single-selection and with multiple-selection techniques), except for the perception of surface texture. This indicates a common understanding of the role of greenery and an ambiguity in the perception of what is meant by the term 'texture'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characteristics of port cities are significantly different than inland cities since they have a spatial relation with water. Waterfronts, main urban squares, and major streets are specified as the predominant components affecting socio-spatial configurations. The research assumes that the imageability of port cities, which refers to "port city identity" in this research, is associated with the visibility of these key public spaces. The port cities of Famagusta and Limassol—the current major port cities of divided Cyprus—were selected to be evaluated on the specified public spaces to reveal this association. The specified spaces are scrutinized through both the space syntax methodology and land-use and movement patterns in relation to visibility parameters. The results show that Limassol is more successful than Famagusta in terms of imageability, as it presents higher spatial and social visibility of public spaces, which also strengthens its port city identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Can the shape of a city promote physical activity? The question of why individuals engage in physical activity has been widely researched, but that research has predominantly focused on socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, economic status) and coarse-grained spatial characteristics (e.g., population density), overlooking key urban characteristics of, say, whether a city is navigable or, as urban theorist Kevin Lynch put it, whether it is ‘imageable’ (whether its spatial configuration is economic of mental effort). That is mainly because, at scale, it is neither easy to model imageability nor feasible to measure physical activity. We modeled urban imageability with a single scalable metric of entropy, and then measured physical activity from 233K wearable devices over three years, and did so across 19 major cities in the developed world. We found that, after controlling for greenery, wealth, walkability, presence of landmarks, and weather conditions, the legibility hypothesis still holds: the more imageable a city, the more its dwellers engage in physical activity. Interestingly, wealth (GDP per capita) has a positive association with physical activity only in cities with inclement climate, effectively acting as a compensation mechanism for bad weather.

The concepts of imageability and legibility are important aspects of urban design. Many scholars use the terms “imageability” and “legibility” interchangeably, usually examining one concept and applying the implications to the other. This research explores the relationship between these two concepts by answering the research questions: 1. how do people perceive the saliency of landmarks (imageability) and 2. how does the spatial configuration facilitate the visibility level of landmarks (legibility)? The Galle Heritage City in Sri Lanka is considered as the case study. The first part of the empirical study is to assess the level of imageability of urban space users by completing 100 cognitive maps and producing a composite cognitive map that indicates the structural landmarks’ salience or the level of imageability. The second part is the level of legibility of the landmarks by employing the visibility assessment process and the third part compares the two results with a concurrence matrix. The findings highlight that there is a positive relationship between people’s perception (imageability) and level of visibility (legibility). Further, imageability mostly depends on semantic properties than legibility, but legibility predominantly depends on structural properties and visual properties are almost equally important to both concepts.

Wakeful resting and listening to music are powerful means to modulate memory. How these activities affect memory when directly compared has not been tested so far. In two experiments, participants encoded and immediately recalled two word lists followed by either 6 min wakefully resting or 6 min listening to music. The results of Experiment 1 show that both post-encoding conditions have a similar effect on memory after 1 day. In Experiment 2, we explored the possibility that less concrete words, i.e. lower in imageability than in Experiment 1, are differently affected by the two post-encoding conditions. The results of Experiment 2 show that, when words are less concrete, more words are retained after 1 day when encoding is followed by wakeful resting rather than listening to music. These findings indicate that the effects of wakeful resting and listening to music on memory consolidation are moderated by the concreteness of the encoded material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In psycholinguistics, concepts are considered abstract if they do not apply to physical objects that we can touch, see, feel, hear, smell or taste. Psychologists usually distinguish concrete from abstract concepts by means of so-called concreteness ratings. In concreteness rating studies, laypeople are asked to rate the concreteness of words based on the above criterion. The wide use of concreteness ratings motivates an assessment of them. I point out two problems: First, most current concreteness ratings test the intuited concreteness of word forms as opposed to concepts. This ignores the ubiquitous phenomenon of lexical ambiguity. Second, the criterion of abstract concepts that the instruction texts of rating studies rely on does not capture the notion that psychologists working on abstract concepts are normally interested in, i.e., concepts that could reasonably be sensorimotor representations. For many concepts that pick out physical objects, this is not reasonable. In this paper, I propose a characterization of concrete and abstract concepts that avoids these two problems and that may be useful for future studies in psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed a Japanese lexical database to investigate the structure of the lexical environment based on the hypothesis that the lexical environment is optimized for the functioning of verbal working memory. Our prediction was that, as a consequence of the cultural transmission of language, low‐imageable meanings tend to be represented by frequent phonological patterns in the current vocabulary rather than infrequent phonological patterns. This prediction was based on two findings of previous laboratory studies on verbal working memory. (1) The quality of phonological (phonemic and accent) representations in verbal working memory depends on phonological regularity knowledge; therefore, short‐term phonological representations are less robust for words with infrequent phonological patterns. (2) Phonological representations are underpinned by contributions from semantic knowledge; therefore, phonological representations of highly imageable words are more robust than those for low‐imageable words. Our database analyses show that nouns with less imageable meanings tend to be associated with more frequent phonological patterns in Japanese vocabulary. This lexical structure can maintain the quality of phonological representations in verbal working memory through contributions of semantic and phonological regularity knowledge. Larger semantic contributions compensate for the less robust phonological representations of infrequent phonological forms. The quality of phonological representations is preserved by phonological regularity knowledge when larger semantic contributions are not expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relics of buildings with Dutch colonial architecture to this day can still be found in several road corridors, especially in Pesanggrahan Village, one of which is Jalan Hassanudin, Batu City. This study serves to measure and measure the community towards building units in forming the image of the area on the corridor of Jalan Hassanudin. This research uses the imageability factor which is used to see the character of the area consisting of impressions, past memories, unforgettable memories, uniqueness, attractiveness, clarity, enjoyment and uniqueness. The measuring instrument used is the semantic differential scale of previous research references. The results of the research regarding impressions are the most dominant variable based on people's impressions. impressiveness, uniqueeness, atractiveness, clarity, pleasantness, distinctiveness, recognizableness are significant variables to the image of the historical area in the corridor of Jalan Hassanudin. Meanwhile, variables such as unforgettable memory and remembrance of the past are variables that have a sig value. > 0.05 so that it does not affect the image of the area.

The words that children learn change over time in predictable ways. The first words that infants acquire are generally ones that are both frequent and highly imageable. Older infants also learn words that are more abstract and some that are less common. It is unclear whether this pattern is attributable to maturational factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficiently developed cognitive faculties needed to learn abstract words) or linguistic factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficient knowledge of their language to use grammatical or contextual cues needed to figure out the meaning of more abstract words). The present study explores this question by comparing vocabulary acquisition in 53 preschool-aged children (M = 51 months, range = 30–76 months) who were adopted from China and Eastern Europe after two and half years of age and 53 vocabulary-matched infant controls born and raised in English speaking families in North America (M = 24 months, range = 16–33 months). Vocabulary was assessed using the MB-CDI Words and Sentences form, word frequency was estimated from the CHILDES database, and imageability was measured using adult ratings of how easily words could be pictured mentally. Both groups were more likely to know words that were both highly frequent and imageable (resulting in an over-additive interaction). Knowledge of a word was also independently affected by the syntactic category that it belongs to. Adopted preschoolers' vocabulary was slightly less affected by imageability. These findings were replicated in a comparison with a larger sample of vocabulary-matched controls drawn from the MB-CDI norming study (M = 22 months, range = 16–30 months; 33 girls). These results suggest that the patterns of acquisition in children's early vocabulary are primarily driven by the accrual of linguistic knowledge, but that vocabulary may also be affected by differences in early life experiences or conceptual knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attribution of mental states (MS) to other species typically follows a scala naturae pattern. However, "simple" mental states, including emotions, sensing, and feelings are attributed to a wider range of animals as compared to the so-called "higher" cognitive abilities. We propose that such attributions are based on the perceptual quality (i.e. imageability) of mental representations related to MS concepts. We hypothesized that the attribution of highly imaginable MS is more dependent on the familiarity of participants with animals when compared to the attribution of MS low in imageability. In addition, we also assessed how animal agreeableness, familiarity with animals, and the type of human-animal interaction related to the judged similarity of animals to humans. Sixty-one participants (19 females, 42 males) with a rural (n = 20) and urban (n = 41) background rated twenty-six wild and domestic animals for their perceived similarity with humans and ability to experience a set of MS: (1) Highly imageable MS: joy, anger, and fear, and (2) MS low in imageability: capacity to plan and deceive. Results show that more agreeable and familiar animals were considered more human-like. Primates, followed by carnivores, suines, ungulates, and rodents were rated more human-like than xenarthrans, birds, arthropods, and reptiles. Higher MS ratings were given to more similar animals and more so if the MS attributed were high in imageability. Familiarity with animals was only relevant for the attribution of the MS high in imageability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines 'instaworthiness' as a classificatory category in discourses of place-making. It engages in social-semiotic analyses of the selfies clicked at instaworthy cafes and pubs in Kolkata to highlight how the photographic performativity of selfie-taking reconfigures the notions of placemaking. It accounts for: how is an 'instaworthy' spot made and consumed? What ramifications does showcasing the self within these specific sites have upon perceptions of identity, both of the self and the space in question? In locating photographic practices of selfies within the wider shifts of the heuristics of 'instaworthiness', this article teases out how the self interacts with a diverse range of non-human actors toward conferring visual apartness upon certain spaces. Thus, producing and circulating selfies as a performance warrant thinking through how discourses of the self and that of spatiality co-constitute each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbal fluency is a cognitive function reflecting executive functions and the ability to retrieve the appropriate information from memory quickly. Previous studies reported conflicting results—impaired and intact verbal fluency—in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Most studies concentrate on overall word productivity, errors, perseverations, clustering, or switching. We used a comprehensive approach to evaluate the reported discrepancy in the literature and introduced a new angle using the concept of word abstraction and imageability. Moreover, we analyzed the performance in two‐time intervals (0–30 s and 31–60 s) to assess the temporal dynamics of verbal fluency and a possible activation or initiation deficit in autism. Sixteen adults with ASD and 16 neurotypical control participants, matched by gender, age, and education level, participated in our study. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find a significant difference between groups in word productivity, the number of errors, clustering, or temporal dynamics, neither in semantic nor in phonemic fluency tasks. Surprisingly, the two study groups' performance did not differ in terms of imageability or concreteness characteristics either. Our results raise the possibility that verbal fluency performance is intact in autism. We also suggest using a comprehensive approach when measuring fluency in autism. Lay summary: People with autism tend to think and communicate differently. In our study, we tested whether people with autism come up with more concrete or imageable words and whether their performance is better compared with neurotypicals in the beginning or in the later phase of a task measuring how many words they can produce in a minute. We did not detect any difference between the two groups; however, we recommend studying verbal fluency in autism from more and different angles in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Deficits in procedural memory have been proposed to account for the language deficits in specific language impairment (SLI). A key aspect of the procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH) account of SLI is that declarative memory is intact and functions as a compensatory mechanism in the acquisition of language in individuals with SLI. The current study examined the neural correlates of lexical-phonological and lexical-semantic processing with respect to these predictions in a group of adolescents with SLI with procedural memory impairment and a group of chronologically age-matched (CA) normal controls. Methods: Participants completed tasks designed to measure procedural and declarative memory and two ERP tasks designed to assess lexical-semantic and lexical-phonological processing in the auditory modality. Procedural memory was assessed using a statistical learning task. Lexical-semantic processing was assessed using a sentence judgment task modulating semantic congruency and lexical-phonological processing was assessed using a word/nonword decision task modulating word frequency. Behavioral performance on the tasks, mean amplitude of the cortical response, and animated topographs were examined. Results: Performance on the statistical word-learning task was at chance for the adolescents with SLI, whereas declarative memory was no different from the CA controls. Behavioral accuracy on the lexical-semantic task was the same for the adolescents with SLI and CA controls but accuracy on the lexical-phonological task was significantly poorer for the adolescents with SLI as compared to the CA controls. An N400 component was elicited in response to semantic congruency on the lexical-semantic task for both groups but differences were noted in both the location and time course of the cortical response for the SLI and CA groups. An N400 component was elicited by word frequency on the lexical-phonological task for the CA controls not for the adolescents with SLI. In contrast, post hoc analysis revealed a cortical response based on imageability for the adolescents with SLI, but not CA controls. Statistical word learning was significantly correlated with speed of processing on the lexical decision task for the CA controls but not for the adolescents with SLI. In contrast, statistical word learning ability was not correlated with the modulation of the N400 on either task for either group. Conclusion: The behavioral data suggests intact semantic conceptual knowledge, but impaired lexical phonological processing for the adolescents with SLI, consistent with the PDH. The pattern of cortical activation in response to semantic congruency and word frequency suggests, however, that the processing of lexical-semantic and lexical-phonological information by adolescents with a history of SLI may be supported by both overlapping and nonoverlapping neural generators to those of CA controls, and a greater reliance on declarative memory strategies. Taken together, the findings from this study suggest that the underlying representations of words in the lexicons of adolescents with a history of SLI may differ qualitatively from those of their typical peers, but these differences may only be evident when behavioral data and neural cortical patterns of activation are examined together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the relations between L2-English proficiency and L1-Turkish lexical property evaluations. We asked whether L2 proficiency affects lexical properties, including imageability and concreteness ratings of 600 Turkish words selected from the Word Frequency Dictionary of Written Turkish. Seventy-two participants (L1-Turkish - L2-English) provided ratings of concreteness and imageability for 600 words on a 7-point scale. In order to assess their L2 proficiency, we administered Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV (PPVT-IV). We divided categories into two subcategories as high and low for the frequency, concreteness, imageability, and age of acquisition (AoA). The relationship between these subcategories and imageability-concreteness was examined by mixed effects linear regression analyses. We found that L2 proficiency and imageability ratings were positively correlated and specifically, this positive association was evident for low-frequency words and later acquired words. Results are in line with the interaction of bilingual representation under the dual-coding theory which suggests that bilinguals develop an interconnected imaginal representation for two languages as opposed to separate verbal representations. As L2 proficiency increased, the imageability also increased. These findings have implications for literature investigating the relationship between L2 proficiency and linguistic outcomes. Additionally, findings point to the importance of considering the L2 proficiency of participants when lexical tasks that involve cue words or word lists are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background & aims: Throughout typical development, children prioritize different perceptual, social, and linguistic cues to learn words. The earliest acquired words are often those that are perceptually salient and highly imageable. Imageability, the ease in which a word evokes a mental image, is a strong predictor for word age of acquisition in typically developing (TD) children, independent of other lexicosemantic features such as word frequency. However, little is known about the effects of imageability in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who tend to have differences in linguistic processing and delayed language acquisition compared to their TD peers. This study explores the extent to which imageability and word frequency are associated with early noun and verb acquisition in children with ASD. Methods: Secondary analyses were conducted on previously collected data of 156 children (78 TD, 78 ASD) matched on sex and parent-reported language level. Total expressive vocabulary, as measured by the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MB-CDI), included 123 words (78 nouns, 45 verbs) that overlapped with previously published imageability ratings and word input frequencies. A two-step hierarchical linear regression was used to examine the relationship between word input frequency, imageability, and total expressive vocabulary. An F-test was then used to assess the unique contribution of imageability on total expressive vocabulary when controlling for word input frequency. Results: In both the TD and ASD groups, imageability uniquely explained a portion of the variance in total expressive vocabulary size, independent of word input frequency. Notably, imageability was significantly associated with noun vocabulary and verb vocabulary size alone, with imageability explaining a greater portion of the variance in total nouns produced than in total verbs produced. Conclusions: Imageability was identified as a significant lexicosemantic feature for describing expressive vocabulary size in children with ASD. Consistent with literature on TD children, children with ASD who have small vocabularies primarily produce words that are highly imageable. Children who are more proficient word learners with larger vocabularies produce words that are less imageable, indicating a potential shift away from reliance on perceptual-based language processing. This was consistent across both noun and verb vocabularies. Implications: Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature describing early word learning in children with ASD and provide a basis for exploring the use of multisensory language learning strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed at providing imageability and subjective frequency ratings collected from four adult age groups ranging from 18 to 85 years old (18–25; 26–39; 40–59; and 60 and over) for 1286 neutral and emotional French words available in the EMA database (Gobin et al., 2017). Overall, the older adults rated words as more (subjectively) frequent and more imageable than the younger adults. Furthermore, we examined the relationships between subjective frequency and imageability, as well as those with emotional variables (i.e., valence, arousal) already available for these words, for each age group. For all age groups, more subjective frequent words were more imageable. Emotional words were more imageable and more frequent. Arousal scores were lower for low- and high-imageability words, and higher for more subjective frequent words. The strength of these links between subjective frequency, imageability, and emotional ratings was found to decrease as a function of age. Finally, by using the lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates of young adults from Megalex (Ferrand et al., 2018), imageability and subjective frequency across age were found to provide an additional contribution to visual word recognition performance as compared to objective lexical variables (i.e., number of letters, syllables, objective frequency, orthographic neighborhood). More importantly, subjective frequency and imageability ratings from the youngest group predicted reaction times and accuracy better than ratings from the oldest group. By providing new age-adapted word characteristics, this norm should be of great use to researchers in the field of cognitive aging who use word materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compounds are morphologically complex words made of different linguistic parts. They are very prevalent in a number of languages such as French. Different psycholinguistic characteristics of compounds have been used in certain studies to investigate the mechanisms involved in compound processing (see Table 7). We provide psycholinguistic norms for a set of 506 French compound words. The words were normed on seven characteristics: lexeme meaning dominance, semantic transparency, sensory experience, conceptual familiarity, imageability, age of acquisition (AoA) and subjective frequency. Reliability measures were computed for the collected norms. Descriptive statistical analyses, and correlational and multiple regression analyses were performed. We also report some comparisons made between our normative data and certain norms obtained in other similar studies. The entire set of norms, which will be very useful to researchers investigating the processing of compounds, is available as Supplemental Material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The present study investigates the relations between L2-English proficiency and L1-Turkish lexical property evaluations. We asked whether L2 proficiency affects lexical properties, including imageability and concreteness ratings of 600 Turkish words selected from the Word Frequency Dictionary of Written Turkish. Seventy-two participants (L1-Turkish - L2-English) provided ratings of concreteness and imageability for 600 words on a 7-point scale. In order to assess their L2 proficiency, we administered Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV (PPVT-IV). We divided categories into two subcategories as high and low for the frequency, concreteness, imageability, and age of acquisition (AoA). The relationship between these subcategories and imageability-concreteness was examined by mixed effects linear regression analyses. We found that L2 proficiency and imageability ratings were positively correlated and specifically, this positive association was evident for low-frequency words and later acquired words. Results are in line with the interaction of bilingual representation under the dual-coding theory which suggests that bilinguals develop an interconnected imaginal representation for two languages as opposed to separate verbal representations. As L2 proficiency increased, the imageability also increased. These findings have implications for literature investigating the relationship between L2 proficiency and linguistic outcomes. Additionally, findings point to the importance of considering the L2 proficiency of participants when lexical tasks that involve cue words or word lists are used.