A Pilot Normative Study for Photographs of Celebrities in Hong Kong

EasyChair Preprint 6440

Abstract

Introduction

This investigation collects a set of colored photographs of local and international celebrities and obtains ratings of various variables including AoA, facial distinctiveness, familiarity, surname frequency, emotional indicators, as well as behavioral data in naming including accuracy, naming and errors, such as tip-of-tongue (ToT).

Method

The first phase generates a list of exemplars of celebrity names that are common, culturally and geographically specific to unimpaired speakers (n=16) across 22 selected occupational categories.

The second phase examines the face-name agreement of the photos chosen in Phase 1. Another group of participants will be asked to imagine a given celebrity’s face and compare the mental image created with the photographs presented for an agreement rating. For each celebrity, the photograph with the highest accumulated score will be used in the third phase.

In Phase 3, the finalized photographs from Phase 2 will first be presented to the third group of participants, who will be required to verbally tell the first name that came up to their mind as soon as possible. Response time (RT), accuracy (i.e., whether the naming matches with the celebrity’s identity), erroneous responses, and reasons for ‘no response’ (e.g. ToT) will be recorded. Subsequently, names of the chosen celebrities will be presented to the fourth group of participants (n=12) for subjective ratings on familiarity, AoA, face distinctiveness, and affective evaluation, using a seven-point scale.

Results

Final results will be presented. This study will fill the gap in Chinese psycholinguistic norm studies. As such it distinguishes itself from other reported normative studies in Hong Kong Cantonese. The final deliverables should be useful to researchers who need such information, for example in designing psycholinguistics experiments in Cantonese.

Keyphrases: Cantonese, proper noun naming, psycholinguistic norms

@booklet{EasyChair:6440,
  author    = {Annie Fung and Anthony Pak Hin Kong and Dustin Kai-Yan Lau},
  title     = {A Pilot Normative Study for Photographs of Celebrities in Hong Kong},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6440},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}