Emiliano Díez

Free-association norms for the Spanish names of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures

The most frequent names in Spanish corresponding to a set of 247 pictures in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) norms were used as stimuli in a discrete free-association task. A sample of 525 Spanish-speaking participants provided the first word that came to mind for each of the verbal stimuli. Responses were organized according to frequency of production in order to prepare word-association norms for the set of stimuli.

Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 7,039 Spanish words

Subjective estimations of age of acquisition (AoA) for a large pool of Spanish words were collected from college students in Spain. The average score for each word (based on 50 individual responses, on a scale from 1 to 11) was taken as an AoA indicator, and normative values for a total of 7,039 single words are provided as supplemental materials. Beyond its intrinsic value as a standalone corpus, the largest of its kind for Spanish, the value of the database is enhanced by the fact that it contains most of the words that are currently included in other normative studies, allowing for a more complete characterization of the lexical stimuli that are usually employed in studies with Spanish-speaking participants. The norms are available for downloading as supplemental materials with this article.

“Identify-to-reject”: A specific strategy to avoid false memories in the DRM paradigm

Previous research using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm has shown that lists of associates in which the critical words were easily identified as the themes of the lists produce lower levels of false memories in adults. In an attempt to analyze whether this effect is due to the application of a specific memory-editing process (the identify-to-reject strategy), two experiments manipulated variables that are likely to disrupt this strategy either at encoding or at retrieval. In Experiment 1, lists were presented at a very fast presentation rate to reduce the possibility of identifying the missing critical word as the theme of the list, and in Experiment 2, participants were pressed to give yes/no recognition answers within a very short time. The results showed that both of these manipulations disrupted the identifiability effect, indicating that the identify-to-reject strategy and theme identifiability play a major role in the rejection of false memories in the DRM paradigm.

Oral frequency norms for 67,979 Spanish words.

Frequency of occurrence is an important attribute of lexical units, and one that is widely used in psychological research and theorization. Although printed frequency norms have long been available for Spanish, and subtitle-based norms have more recently been published, oral frequency norms have not been systematically compiled for a representative set of words. In this study, a corpus of over three million units, representing present-day use of the language in Spain, was used to derive a frequency count of spoken words. The corpus consisted of 913 separate documents that contained transcriptions of oral recordings obtained in a wide variety of situations, mostly radio and television programs. The resulting database, containing absolute and relative frequency values for 67,979 orally produced words, is presented. Validity analyses showed significant correlations of oral frequency with other frequency measures and suggest that oral frequency can predict some types of lexical processing with the same or higher levels of precision, when contrasted with text- or subtitle-based frequencies. In conclusion, we discuss ways in which these oral frequency norms can be put to use. The norms can be downloaded from www.springerlink.com.

False recognition production indexes in Spanish for 60 DRM lists with three critical words

A normative study was conducted using the Deese/Roediger–McDermott paradigm (DRM) to obtain false recognition for 60 six-word lists in Spanish, designed with a completely new methodology. For the first time, lists included words (e.g., bridal, newlyweds, bond, commitment, couple, to marry) simultaneously associated with three critical words (e.g., love, wedding, marriage). Backward associative strength between lists and critical words was taken into account when creating the lists. The results showed that all lists produced false recognition. Moreover, some lists had a high false recognition rate (e.g., 65%; jail, inmate, prison: bars, prisoner, cell, offender, penitentiary, imprisonment). This is an aspect of special interest for those DRM experiments that, for example, record brain electrical activity. This type of list will enable researchers to raise the signal-to-noise ratio in false recognition event-related potential studies as they increase the number of critical trials per list, and it will be especially useful for the design of future research.

Normative ratings for perceptual and motor attributes of 750 object concepts in Spanish

Subjective ratings of perceptual and motor attributes were obtained for a set of 750 concrete concepts in Spanish by requiring scale-based judgments from a sample of university students (N = 539). Following on the work of Amsel, Urbach, and Kutas (2012), the seven attributes were color, motion, sound, smell, taste, graspability, and pain. Normative data based on the obtained ratings are provided as a tool for future investigations. Additionally, the relationships of these attributes to other lexical dimensions (e.g., familiarity, frequency, concreteness) and the factorial organization of concepts around the main components were analyzed. The pattern of results is consistent with prior findings that highlight the relevance of dimensions related to survival as being crucially involved in conceptual processing.

Retrieving Against the Flow: Incoherence Between Optic Flow and Movement Direction Has Little Effect on Memory for Order

Research from multiple areas in neuroscience suggests a link between self-locomotion and memory. In two free recall experiments with adults, we looked for a link between (a) memory, and (b) the coherence of movement and optic flow. In both experiments, participants heard lists of words while on a treadmill and wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset. In the first experiment, the VR scene and treadmill were stationary during encoding. During retrieval, all participants walked forward, but the VR scene was stationary, moved forward, or moved backwards. In the second experiment, during encoding all participants walked forward and viewed a forward-moving VR scene. During retrieval, all participants continued to walk forward but the VR scene was stationary, forward-moving, or backward-moving. In neither experiment was there a significant difference in the amount recalled, or output order strategies, attributable to differences in movement conditions. Thus, any effects of movement on memory are more limited than theories of hippocampal function and theories in cognitive psychology anticipate.

Sensory experience ratings for 5,500 Spanish words.

Sensory experience rating (SER) is a recently developed subjective lexical index that reflects the extent to which a word evokes a sensory and/or perceptual experience in a reader (Juhasz & Yap, 2013; Juhasz, Yap, Dicke, Taylor, & Gullick, 2011). In the present study, SERs for a set of 5,500 Spanish words were collected, which makes this the largest set of norms for SER in the Spanish language to date. Additionally, with the aim of further exploring the implications of this new indicator and its relations with other psycholinguistic variables, a variety of correlational and regression analyses are provided. The results showed that SERs significantly correlated with imageability, age of acquisition, and a number of variables related to perception and emotion. In addition, SERs predicted a significant amount of variance in lexical decision times when other variables were controlled.