Perceptual and Interoceptive Strength Norms for 270 French Words

Abstract

Perceptual experience through the five modalities (i.e., vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) has demonstrated its key role in semantics. Researchers also highlighted the role of interoceptive information in the grounded representation of concepts. However, to this day, there is no available data across these modalities in the French language. Therefore, the aim of this study was to circumvent this caveat. Participants aged between 18 and 50 completed an online survey in which we recorded scores of perceptual strength (PS), interoceptive information, imageability, concreteness, conceptual familiarity, and age of acquisition of 270 words of the French language. We also analysed the relationships between perceptual modalities and psycholinguistic variables. Results showed that vast majority of concepts were visually-dominant. Correlation analyses revealed that the five PS variables were strongly correlated with imageability, concreteness, and conceptual familiarity and highlight that PS variables index one aspect of the semantic representations of a word. On the other hand, high interoceptive scores were highlighted only for the less imageable and less concrete words, emphasizing their importance for the grounding of abstract concepts. Future research could use these norms in the investigation of the role of perceptual experience in the representation of concepts and their impact on word processing.

Differences related to aging in sensorimotor knowledge: Investigation of perceptual strength and body object interaction

“…Data from the literature also showed that BOI and PS variables are strongly correlated with other semantic variables (i.e. concreteness, imageability, age of acquisition) that are known to affect word processing (Chedid et al, 2019;Juhasz & Yap, 2013 ;A Miceli et al, 2021;Miklashevsky, 2018;Pexman et al, 2019). Taken together, these studies are particularly relevant for appreciating the richness of conceptual representations and understanding how our knowledge is grounded.…”

“…Fifty-five older participants with French as mother-tongue (37 women), aged between 65 and 89 (mean age= 74.38; SD= 4.93) with a socio-cultural level of high school (socio-cultural level= 4.16; four corresponding to high school 1 ) took part in this study and have completed the PS and BOI questionnaire. They were compared with 141 French-speaking young participants (100 women), aged between 18 and 50 (mean age= 25.75; SD= 7.43) with a socio-cultural level of higher education (socio-cultural level= 5.12; five corresponding to the bachelor level) from our PS previous study (A Miceli et al, 2021). The same young participants from this previous study also completed the BOI rating presented in the current study.…”

“…Of particular relevance to the present work are studies that collect norms of Perceptual Strength (PS) in order to capture sensory dimensions of semantics (e.g. Lynott & Connell, 2009 ;Morucci et al, 2019 ;A Miceli et al, 2021) and body-object interaction (BOI) in order to capture the motor dimension of semantics (Bennett et al, 2011;Pexman et al, 2019;Tillotson et al, 2008). The PS variable represents the extent to which a word can be experienced by separate sensory modalities and is obtained by asking participants to rate the extent to which they experience a word in each of the five sensory modalities on a scale of 0 (not experienced at all) to 5 (highly experienced).…”

“…The aim of this study is to investigate this exploratory question by comparing French PS and BOI data collected in young adults with those collected in healthy older adults. We will compare available Frenchspeaking PS data in young adults (A Miceli et al, 2021) with those collected in 55 older participants in the present study. Since no BOI norms are available in French, we will make available the BOI data for these same youths and compare them to the assessment of the same 55 elders.…”

Could Sign-Based Semantics and Embodied Semantics Benefit One Another?

“…Second, there is no wide agreement on how to explain the semantic content of abstract language: is it based on perception and action experience, as Pulvermüller (2013; argues? Could it be based on an inner experience, such as interoception (Connell, Lynott and Banks, 2018;Miceli et al, 2021)? What if it is mostly based on linguistic and social experience (Borghi et al, 2018;Borghi et al, 2021)?…”