Imagery, concreteness, goodness, and familiarity ratings for 500 proverbs sampled from the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs

Abstract

Partly in order to facilitate research on the relation between some standard psychological variables, we gathered normative data on 500 proverbs sampled from the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson, 1970). The scales for which we gathered data are imagery, concreteness, goodness, and familiarity. These norms may be of value to researchers who wish to sample linguistic units larger than the word from a set that contains an extensive number of unfamiliar and familiar items. To illustrate the possible uses to which these data may be put, we presented a causal model of the relation between the four variables mentioned above. © 1993 Psychonomic Society, Inc.