Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 4,640 verbs in Spanish

Abstract

Many studies have shown that how words are processed in a variety of language-related tasks is affected by their age of acquisition (AoA). Most AoA norms have been collected for nouns, a fact that limits the extent to which verb stimuli can be adequately manipulated and controlled in empirical studies. With the aim of increasing the number of verbs with AoA values in Spanish, 900 college students were recruited to provide subjective estimates for a total of 4,640 infinitive and reflexive forms. An AoA score for each verb was obtained by averaging the responses of the participants, and these norms were included, together with additional quantitative information (standard deviations, ranges, and z scores), in a database that can be downloaded with this article as supplemental materials.

Motor content norms for 4,565 verbs in Spanish

“…The final database, which can be consulted and downloaded from the website http://inco.grupos.uniovi. es/enlaces, has been completed with age-of-acquisition (AoA) data taken from Alonso et al (2016), as well as with data on frequency, logarithm of frequency, length in letters and syllables, orthographic and phonological neighborhood, familiarity, imageability, and concreteness, all taken from the EsPal database (Duchon, Perea, Sebastián-Gallés, Martí, & Carreiras, 2013).…”

“…Preparation of the questionnaires that were handed out to the participants started with a database of 4,640 verbs in Spanish (Alonso, Díez, & Fernandez, 2016). Of all the verbs, a total of 4,565 were selected from the initial database; that is, 75 verbs were excluded because they were low-frequency words in Spanish, such as ademar, concomitar, or melgar, and participants would probably not know their meaning.…”

EmoFinder: The meeting point for Spanish emotional words

“…Concerning the former, Alonso et al (2015) provided subjective ratings of age of acquisition (AoA) for 7,039 Spanish words, a variable that has been related to word processing (see Juhasz, 2005, andJohnston &Barry, 2006, for reviews). In Spanish, there have been several normative studies on subjective AoA (Alonso, Díez, & Fernández, 2016;Alonso et al, 2015;González-Nosti, 2014;Hinojosa, Rincón-Pérez, et al, 2016;Moreno-Martínez, Montoro, & Rodríguez-Rojo, 2014). However, we have only included in emoFinder the datasets of Alonso et al (2015) and Hinojosa, Rincón-Pérez, et al (2016), because these two studies used a comparable 11-point rating scale, whereas the other studies used either a 7-point rating scale (González-Nosti et al, 2014;Moreno-Martínez et al, 2014) or no scale at all (Alonso et al, 2016).…”

“…In Spanish, there have been several normative studies on subjective AoA (Alonso, Díez, & Fernández, 2016;Alonso et al, 2015;González-Nosti, 2014;Hinojosa, Rincón-Pérez, et al, 2016;Moreno-Martínez, Montoro, & Rodríguez-Rojo, 2014). However, we have only included in emoFinder the datasets of Alonso et al (2015) and Hinojosa, Rincón-Pérez, et al (2016), because these two studies used a comparable 11-point rating scale, whereas the other studies used either a 7-point rating scale (González-Nosti et al, 2014;Moreno-Martínez et al, 2014) or no scale at all (Alonso et al, 2016). 2 The final dataset included in emoFinder is that of González-Nosti et al (2014).…”

“…In contrast, the studies of González-Nosti et al (2014) and Moreno-Martínez et al (2014) employed a 7-point scale for AoA ratings, but the points on these scales represent different age ranges in the two databases (e.g., a score of 7 in González-Nosti et al, 2014, would be at an indeterminate point between 6 and 7 in the database of Moreno-Martínez et al, 2014). Finally, in the study of Alonso et al (2016), no scale at all was used for AoA: the authors simply asked directly about the age of acquisition of the words, in years. A description of each variable can be found in Table 2 Behav Res (2018) 50:84-93 overlapped words across the databases included in emoFinder when we consider valence (ranging from .90 to .99), arousal (ranging from .68 to .92), concreteness (ranging from .59 to .82), familiarity (ranging from .78 to .85), and AoA ratings (.95).…”