A Systematic Review of Normative Studies Using Images of Common Objects

Abstract

Common objects comprise living and non-living things people interact with in their daily-lives. Images depicting common objects are extensively used in different fields of research and intervention, such as linguistics, psychology, and education. Nevertheless, their adequate use requires the consideration of several factors (e.g., item-differences, cultural-context and confounding correlated variables), and careful validation procedures. The current study presents a systematic review of the available published norms for images of common objects. A systematic search using PRISMA guidelines indicated that despite their extensive use, the production of norms for such stimuli with adult populations is quite limited (N = 55), particularly for more ecological images, such as photos (N = 14). Among the several dimensions in which the items were assessed, the most commonly referred in our sample were familiarity, visual complexity and name agreement, illustrating some consistency across the reported dimensions while also indicating the limited examination of other potentially relevant dimensions for image processing. The lack of normative studies simultaneously examining affective, perceptive and semantic dimensions was also documented. The number of such normative studies has been increasing in the last years and published in relevant peer-reviewed journals. Moreover, their datasets and norms have been complying with current open science practices. Nevertheless, they are still scarcely cited and replicated in different linguistic and cultural contexts. The current study brings important theoretical contributions by characterizing images of common objects stimuli and their culturally-based norms while highlighting several important features that are likely to be relevant for future stimuli selection and evaluative procedures. The systematic scrutiny of these normative studies is likely to stimulate the production of new, robust and contextually-relevant normative datasets and to provide tools for enhancing the quality of future research and intervention.

Conceptual knowledge modulates memory recognition of common items: The selective role of item-typicality

“…The stimulus materials for the encoding manipulation consisted of 96 images of common items, selected from a normalized database (Souza et al, 2021). The original items belonged to eight well-studied superordinate categories (from Santi et al, 2015) from living (fruits, vegetables, mammals, birds) and non-living (vehicles, clothes, kitchen utensils, and musical instruments) domains rated on commonly reported dimensions in normative studies using such type of stimuli (Souza et al, 2020). Stimuli selection was based on their ratings on item-typicality on a 7-point scale (low: M = 4.65, SD = 0.93; high: M = 6.58, SD = 0.93, t(94)= -13.90, p < .001, d z = 1.42, 90% CI [1.18,1.66]) and controlled for arousal, t(94)= -1.546, p = .125; valence, t(94) = -1.783, p = .08; and visual complexity, t(94) = .807, p = .422.…”

Inter- and Transcultural Learning in Social Virtual Reality: A Proposal for an Inter- and Transcultural Virtual Object Database to be Used in the Implementation, Reflection, and Evaluation of Virtual Encounters

“…Mostly, a linguistically and culturally homogeneous sample analyzes a set of objects for variables such as recognition, familiarity, daily use, or arousal [26,28,29]. The different linguistic and cultural contexts are rarely investigated [40]. Moreover, the connotations and associations of these objects were mainly investigated by explicit methods.…”

Nudge and bias in subjective ratings? The role of icon sets in determining ratings of icon characteristics

“…Visual complexity (Experiment 2) Visual complexity is one of the most frequently examined characteristics of icons and pictures (Souza et al, 2020) and is typically implicated in visual search. Icon complexity has a negative influence on icon search performance (Byrne, 1993;Gerlach & Marques, 2014;Isherwood et al, 2007;McDougall et al, 2000;McDougall et al, 2006;Reppa et al, 2008;Reppa & McDougall, 2015;Scott, 1993).…”

“…Barry et al, 1997;Dan-Glauser & Scherer, 2011;Ito, Cacioppo, & Lang, 1998;Paivio et al, 1968;Spreen & Schulz, 1966;Gilhooly & Logie, 1980;Souza et al, 2021;Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980;Snodgrass & Yuditsky, 1996). Similar norms are available for icon corpora (Forsythe et al, 2017;McDougall, & Curry, & de Bruijn, O., 1999;Prada et al, 2015;Rodrigues et al, 2018;Souza et al, 2020). They include measures associated with ease of access to meaning such as meaningfulness, concreteness, name agreement, and ambiguity, as well as measures of the goodness of fit between the icon and its intended meaning such as semantic distance, name agreement, and clarity/ambiguity.…”