RealPic: Picture norms of real-world common items

Abstract

Pictures are often used as stimuli in several fields, such as psychology and neuroscience. However, co-occurring image-related properties might impact their processing, emphasizing the importance of validating such materials to guarantee the quality of research and professional practices. This is particularly relevant for pictures of common items because of their wide applicability potential. Normative studies have already been conducted to create and validate such pictures, yet most of them focused on stimulus without naturalistic elements (e.g., line drawings). Norms for real-world pictures of common items are rare, and their normative examination does not always simultaneously assess affective, semantic and perceptive dimensions, namely in the Portuguese context. Real-world pictures constitute pictorial representations of the world with realistic details (e.g., natural color or position), thus improving their ecological validity and their suitability for empirical studies or intervention purposes. Consequently, the establishment of norms for real-world pictures is mandatory for exploring their ecological richness and to uncover their impact across several relevant dimensions. In this study, we established norms for 596 real-world pictures of common items (e.g., tomato, drum) selected from existing databases and distributed into 12 categories. The pictures were evaluated on nine dimensions by a Portuguese sample. The results present the norms by item, by dimension and their correlations as well as cross-cultural analyses. RealPic is a culturally based dataset that offers systematic and flexible standards and is suitable for selecting stimuli while controlling for confounding effects in empirical tasks and interventional applications.Keywords Norms . Real-world pictures . Affective . Perceptive . Semantic . Cross-cultural analysis Pictures are often used as visual stimuli to access or even improve psychological processes (e.g., Brady et al., 2008;Caramazza & Konkle, 2013). However, pictures are complex stimuli, and their characteristics may influence several cognitive and affective processes (Boukadi et al., 2016;Reppa & McDougall, 2015). Therefore, their careful production and validation are essential to guarantee the quality of experimental and interventional designs and to provide comparable results across studies (see Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980). Specifically, the assessment of pictures and their characteristics permits the control of their impact on psychological processes, enabling the systematic manipulation of their relevant properties while reducing bias introduced by similar/ correlated dimensions (Brodeur et al., 2010;Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980).Critically, validation endeavors require time and precise procedures. In order to overcome this time-consuming task, several databases have been produced and made available to the scientific community. The seminal work by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) constitutes one of the first/most wellknown databases. Subsequently, several studies replicated and exte...

Aesthetic appeal influences visual search performance

“…In recognition of this, there is increasing number of publications of normative ratings for icons and other pictorial stimuli that include ratings of aesthetics. In a recent review of normative studies of pictures, Souza et al ( 2020 ) argued that aesthetic appeal was an important stimulus characteristic and part and parcel of the cognitive processing of both pictures and icons (see also Garrido et al, 2016; McDougall & Reppa, 2008 ; Prada et al, 2016 ; Souza et al, 2021 ). Icon-specific research has also demonstrated the importance of these factors in determining user performance (Reppa et al, 2021 ; Reppa & McDougall, 2015 ).…”

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).…”

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

“…Barry et al, 1997;Dan-Glauser & Scherer, 2011;Gilhooly & Logie, 1980;Ito et al, 1998;Paivio et al, 1968;Spreen & Schulz, 1966;Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980;Snodgrass & Yuditsky, 1996). This is also the case for icons (McDougall et al, 1999;Prada et al, 2015;Reppa et al, 2008;Rodrigues et al, 2018;Souza et al, 2020Souza et al, , 2021. The present series of experiments sought to examine potential bias in subjective ratings of the visual, affective, and semantic properties of icons.…”

“…The methods employed to obtain icon ratings have their origins in subjective rating norms developed for words and pictures (e.g. 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).…”