The age at which words are first learned appears to be more influential in determining the ease of retrieving words from semantic memory than objective frequency, familiarity, imagery, and meaningfulness. To facilitate research on a wider variety of tasks, we present norms for 543 words for age-of-acquisition, imagery, familiarity, and meaningfulness. Most of the words form single-solution anagrams. There are 471 six-letter nouns and 72 five-letter words. Also reported are the means, 80s, and ranges for each dimension and the intercorrelations between dimensions. Intergroup reliabilities ranged from .847 to .982. Recent studies have indicated that the age at which words are first learned is influential in determining the ease of retrieving words from semantic memory. Frequency of usage during childhood was found to predict latency to name category instances more accurately than adult frequency of usage (Loftus & Suppes, 1972). Age-of-acquisition as rated by young adults was found by Carroll and White (1973) to be a more relevant variable than objective frequency in predicting latency to name pictures. Rated age-of-acquisition also predicted the speed and likelihood of solving anagrams more accurately than rated familiarity, objective frequency, imagery, and meaningfulness (Stratton, Jacobus, & Brinley, Note l). The norms reported in this paper provide adult norms on rated age-of-acquisition, rated imagery, rated familiarity, and meaningfulness for 543 words. Two word samples from these norms were used in an earlier study (see Note 1). METHOD Subjects A total of 879 male and female volunteers from introductory psychology classes contributed to the six-letter word norms during the 1973 fall semester and the 1974 spring semester. An additional 204 males and females from the same subject pool contributed to the five-letter norms during the 1974 summer and fall semesters. Different subjects participated in each segment of the study.
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