Imagery, concreteness, emotionality, and meaningfulness values of words: replication and extension

Abstract

We hypothesized that, contrary to prior investigations, when concrete and abstract words have similar meanings, correlations of rated emotionality with ratings of imagery, concreteness, and meaningfulness would be positive. 106 subjects rated 48 pairs of words, such as friend and friendship, that differ in only one morpheme. The words of these pairs all differed in concreteness but little in core meaning. Subjects rated the words on imagery, concreteness, emotionality, and meaningfulness. Correlations among all variables were positive and significant: .72 for imagery and emotionality, .71 imagery and meaningfulness, .87 imagery and concreteness, .41 emotionality and meaningfulness, .57 emotionality and concreteness, and .62 meaningfulness and concreteness.