Sensory experience rating (SER), a new variable motivated by the grounded cognition framework of conceptual processing (e.g., Barsalou, 2008 ), indexes the degree to which a word evokes sensory/perceptual experiences. In the present study, SERs were collected for over 2,850 words. While SER is correlated with imageability, age of acquisition, and word frequency, the latter variables (along with seven others) account for less than 30{\%} of the variance in SER. Reanalyses of two large-scale studies demonstrate that SER significantly predicts lexical decision times when other established predictor variables are statistically controlled. These results suggest that conceptual processing is grounded in sensory systems. Additionally, a major benefit of this variable is that it allows psycholinguistic researchers to examine semantic-perceptual links for all word classes with a single rating.
The instructions (see Appendix) required participants to rate the degree to which each word evoked a sensory experience (1=the word evokes no sensory experience, and 7=the word evokes a strong sensory experience).