Animacy norms for 224 European Portuguese concrete words

Sara B. Félix, Josefa N. S. Pandeirada, James S. Nairne

Abstract


Words are frequently used, for example, as stimuli in cognitive and linguistic research. Considering
that there are various psycholinguistic variables known to influence word processing (e.g., frequency,
concreteness), it is important to control for those variables. Recently, it has been reported that animacy
(the characteristic of being a living/animate or a non-living/inanimate entity) also affects various
cognitive and linguistic processes. In fact, animacy has been found to be one of the best predictors of
free recall. However, animacy is still an uncontrolled variable in most studies and information about
this variable is still, for the most part, absent. In this study, we provide animacy norms for a set of
224 European Portuguese concrete words. Such data should provide Portuguese researchers a helpful
tool to start considering this dimension in a systematic way in their research.

Keywords


Animacy, Word norms, European Portuguese.

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14417/ap.1690

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