NIM is Web-based software developed to help experimenters with some of the usual tasks carried out in psycholinguistic studies. It allows the user to search for words according to several variables, such as length, matching substrings, lexical frequency, or part of speech, in English, Spanish, and Catalan. NIM also provides the user with the possibilities to obtain different word metrics, such as lexical frequency, length, and part of speech; to find intralanguage and cross-language lexical neighbors; and to get control words for critical stimuli. Regardless of the language used, the program also enables the user to get the orthographic similarity between word pairs and to identify repeated items in lists of experimental stimuli. NIM is free and is publicly available at
This study presents semantic ambiguity norms for 530 Spanish words. Two subjective measures of semantic ambiguity and two subjective measures of relatedness of ambiguous word meanings were collected. In addition, two objective measures of semantic ambiguity were included. Furthermore, subjective ratings were obtained for some relevant lexicosemantic variables, such as concreteness, familiarity, emotional valence, arousal, and age of acquisition. In sum, the database overcomes some of the limitations of the published databases of Spanish ambiguous words; in particular, the scarcity of measures of ambiguity, the lack of relatedness of ambiguous word meanings measures, and the absence of a set of unambiguous words. Thus, it will be very helpful for researchers interested in exploring semantic ambiguity as well as for those using semantic ambiguous words to study language processing in clinical populations.
When participants are asked to translate an ambiguous word, they are slower and less accurate than in the case of single-translation words (e.g., Láxen & Lavour, 2010; Tokowicz & Kroll, 2007). We report an experiment to further examine this multiple-translation effect by investigating the influence of variables shown to be relevant in bilingual processing. The experiment included cognates and non-cognates with one translation or with multiple translations. The latter were presented with their dominant or subordinate translations. Highly-proficient balanced bilinguals responded to a translation recognition task in the two language directions (Catalan–Spanish and Spanish–Catalan). The results showed a significant multiple-translation effect in both cognates and non-cognates. Moreover, this effect was obtained regardless of language dominance and translation direction. Participants were faster and more accurate when performing translation recognition for the dominant than for the subordinate translations. The findings are interpreted adopting the Distributed Representation Model (de Groot, 1992b).
Studying epistemically unwarranted beliefs (EUB) is relevant at basic, applied, and social levels. However, EUB scales validated in Spain are scare. Consequently, we aimed to develop and validate a scale of this kind. One thousand four hundred and sixty participants answered to a preliminary version of the questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed the final form of PEUBI: a 36-item instrument with five related factors (Superstitions, Occultism and Pseudoscience, Traditional Religion, Extraordinary Life Forms, and Conspiracy Theories). The results showed that the items were little affected by social desirability bias. PEUBI factor scores showed good internal consistency (estimates between .85 and .97), testretest reliability (estimates between .75 and .93), and convergent-divergent validity.Sociodemographic differences were also explored, observing lower levels of EUB in men, elders, from pure sciences and technology, and atheists. In conclusion, PEUBI is a valid and reliable psychometric instrument to assess paranormal, pseudoscientific and conspiracy beliefs in Spanish adults.
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