Psycholinguistic norms of 350 object pictures in Hong Kong Cantonese – A preliminary report

Introduction:
Large-scale psycholinguistic norms are getting increasingly common. In this study, the psycholinguistic norm of a set of 350 object pictures designed for the Hong Kong culture with modal names, naming response time (RT), ratings of visual complexity, picture-name-agreement, age-of-acquisition and familiarity is reported. Besides, a semantic features naming task was also conducted.

Method:
One naming experiment and four rating experiments, namely ratings of visual complexity, familiarity, age-of-acquisition and name-picture-agreement using Likert scales, were conducted. For each of the naming and rating experiments, 40 undergraduate students (gender-balanced, age between 18 to 21 years) reported to have born in Hong Kong and used Cantonese to communicate since kindergarten, were recruited. Each participant was tested individually in a quiet room. For each trial, one of the randomly ordered target pictures was presented and the participant was required to name using Cantonese or give ratings according to prior instructions illustrated with examples. For each picture item, the name used by most participants was identified as the modal name. H value of each picture item, which is an index sensitive to the number and weight of alternative names, was also calculated.

Result:
Results of linear regression analyses indicated that the naming RT was significantly predicted by H-value, age-of-acquisition, familiarity, name-picture-agreement and visual complexity. The total variances (R2) explained was 77.4%.

Conclusion:
The picture set and the corresponding psycholinguistic norm obtained serve as invaluable resources for designing assessments and treatment for clinical purpose. Analysis of the semantic feature naming task is still ongoing. Results will be presented in the conference. Finally, the preliminary results of the naming performance from two patients with aphasia using the this picture set and another set of action pictures collected indicated possible nouns-verbs dissociation in lexical retrieval in Cantonese. Theoretical implications will be discussed.