Word norms for blind and sighted subjects familiarity concreteness meaningfulness imageability imagery modality and word associations

Normative values for word characteristics were obtained from a sample of 12 college-educated, totally congenitally blind subjects on the basis oftheir ratings of 161 nouns on scales of familiar- ity, concreteness, meaningfulness, and imageability. Thedominantmodality ofimagery foreach image-evoking word and the strongest word associate for each item also were recorded. The same data were collected for a group of sighted subjects, both to provide a comparison group for the blind subjects and totest the comparability of sightedsubjects' ratings with existing norms. Rat- ings for sighted subjects correlated strongly with those norms, although the coefficients were slightly higher for ratings of concreteness and imageability than for ratings of familiarity and meaningfulness. Ratings of blind subjects correlated only slightly lower with existing norms for imagery and concreteness, but considerably lower for familiarity and meaningfulness.