In cognitive science, results are obtained following the manipulation of one stimulus' variable and the control of potential confounding variables. To avoid the tedious task of measuring confounding effects, scientists often refer to normative sets of stimuli. The Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) is one of these sets. It initially included 480 normative stimuli of common objects and norms for seven variables (name, category, familiarity, visual complexity, object's typicality, manipulability and orientation). The BOSS has expanded and provides a wider variety of stimuli in order to fulfill the needs of experiments. To date, the latest version of the BOSS is comprised of 1,420 normative stimuli, including photos of animals, and new norms (color diagnositicity, symmetry, and action related norms). In order to demonstrate the influence of normative variables on cognitions, experiments on episodic memory were completed using the BOSS. Analyses were conducted as a function of the norms and indicated that name agreement, visual complexity, object/viewpoint agreement, symmetry, and color diagnosticity all influenced memory in distinct ways mostly by affecting the performance to new stimuli and by inducing response biases.
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