Property norms for typical and atypical items from 17 categories: A description and discussion

Abstract

A description is presented of normative data for property responses to 121 words-17 category labels, three typical and three atypical members of each category, and the words "plant" and "animal." The production frequency of properties is considered a measure of property dominance or semantic relatedness, and has been validated for the present data as a significant predictor of reaction time to property statements. Additional data include measures that support definitions of typicality in terms of property overlap between member and category, criteriality or dominance of the superordinate term, and the average number of properties generated to the category member. In reverse order, these three variables provide the best prediction of rated typicality. Average number of properties and superordinate dominance were the more important variables in this prediction, were virtually independent statistically, and were approximately equal in their contribution. Implications for semantic memory models are discussed. © 1978 Psychonomic Society, Inc.