Using the World-Wide Web to obtain large-scale word norms: 190,212 ratings on a set of 2,654 German nouns

Abstract

This article presents a new database of 2,654 German nouns rated by a sample of 3,907 subjects on three psycholinguistic attributes: concreteness, valence, and arousal. As a new means of data collection in the field of psycholinguistic research, all ratings were obtained via the Internet, using a tailored Web application. Analysis of the obtained word norms showed good agreement with two existing norm sets. A cluster analysis revealed a plausible set of four classes of nouns: abstract concepts, aversive events, pleasant activities, and physical objects. In an additional application example, we demonstrate the usefulness of the database for creating parallel word lists whose elements match as closely as possible. The complete database is available for free from ftp://ftp.uni-duesseldorf.de/pub/psycho/lahl/WWN. Moreover, the Web application used for data collection is inherently capable of collecting word norms in any language and is going to be released for public use as well.

A comparison of stimulus ratings made online and in person: Gender and method effects

“…The ratings from the undergraduate sample have become a standard reference in psycholinguistics, and they were used for comparison in Experiment 2 of the present study. Lahl, Göritz, Pietrowsky, and Rosenberg (2009) gathered ratings of German nouns via the Internet. Each noun heaviest of a set of 12 objects by using a scale a limited number of times.…”

Norms of valence and arousal for 14,031 Spanish words

“…Norms of affective properties of words have been published in multiple languages such as European Portuguese (Soares, Comesaña, Pinheiro, Simões, & Frade, 2012), Brazilian Portuguese (Kristensen, de Azevedo Gomes, Justo, & Vieira, 2011), French (Monnier & Syssau, 2013;Bonin, et al, 2003;Gilet, Grühn, Studer, and Labouvie-Vief, 2012, among others), German (Kanske & Kotz, 2010;Lahl, Göritz, Pietrowsky, & Rosenberg, 2009;Võ et al, 2009;Võ, Jacobs, & Conrad, 2006), Polish (Imbir, 2015), Finnish (Söderholm, Häyry, Laine, & Karrasch, 2013;Eilola & Havelka, 2010), Italian (Montefinese, Ambrosini, Fairfield, & Mammarella, 2014) and Dutch (Moors et al, 2013). In Spanish, the largest set of emotional norms so far was published in Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, & Comesaña (2007), which includes valence, arousal, and dominance norms for the Spanish translation equivalents of the original 1034 items from ANEW using a method very similar to that in Bradley & Lang (1999).…”

Norms of valence, arousal, dominance, and age of acquisition for 4,300 Dutch words

“…Such rating studies have been reported for pictures (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008), sounds (Bradley & Lang, 1999b), and words in several languages, including English (Bradley & Lang, 1999a;Brown & Ure, 1969;Stevenson, Mikels, & James, 2007), Spanish (Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, & Comesaña, 2007), French (Bertels, Kolinski, & Morais, 2009;Bonin et al, 2003;Corson & Quistrebert, 2000;Messina, Moré, & Cantraine, 1989;Niedenthal et al, 2004;Syssau & Font, 2005 ), German (Grühn & Smith, 2008;Hager & Hasselhorn, 1994;Lahl, Göritz, Pietrowsky, & Rosenberg, 2009;Võ et al, 2009), and Finish (Eilola & Havelka, 2010). In Dutch, a study by Hermans and De Houwer (1994) provided valence ratings and subjective familiarity ratings for 740 Dutch words, of which 370 were adjectives referring to personality traits and 370 were nouns.…”