51 properties of 125 words: A unit analysis of verbal behavior

Abstract

Values for 125 words were obtained for 51 scales including measures of orthography, pronunciation, imagery, categorizability, association, number of attributes, age-of-acquisition, word frequency, goodness, emotionality, autobiographical memory, tachistoscopic recognition, reading latency, lexical decision, incidental and intentional recall, recall using a mnemonic pathway, paired-associate learning, and recognition. Six factors emerged: Spelling and Sound, Imagery and Meaning, Word Frequency, Recall, Emotionality, and Goodness. Implications for current methodology and theory are discussed, including the claims: that multivariate research is a necessary addition to the study of verbal behavior; that a unidimensional concept such as depth does not do justice to the complexity of recall; and that associative frequency, emotionality, and pronunciability are among the best predictors of our commonly used tasks. © 1980 Academic Press, Inc.