Introduction

Psycholinguistic normative data have been facilitative to the research on the underlying mechanism for lexical processing. Increasing number of studies for various norms in Hong Kong Chinese have been conducted. In this study, the naming of proper nouns was targeted by developing a set of norms for celebrity naming based on local native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. Specifically, this study obtained ratings of various psycholinguistic variables, based on a set of colored photographs of local and international celebrities.

Method

This study involving recruitment of 48 healthy adults (40-65 years, with a 1:1 gender ratio, stratified into two education groups) was conducted in three phases.

Phase 1 generated a list of exemplars of celebrity names that are common, culturally and geographically specific to unimpaired speakers (n=16) across 22 selected occupational categories. 

Phase 2 examined the face-name agreement and mental image of the photos chosen in Phase 1. 

In Phase 3, the finalized photographs from Phase 2 were presented to the third group of participants (n=12), who were required to verbally tell the first name that came up to their mind . Response time (RT), accuracy, erroneous responses, and reasons for ‘no response’ (e.g. ToT) were recorded. Subsequently, subjective ratings on familiarity, AoA, face distinctiveness, and affective evaluation, were collected.

Conclusions

The pilot results reinforced the cultural and geographic specificity of celebrity norms. We believe that 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 and the final deliverables should be useful to researchers who need such information, for example in designing psycholinguistics experiments in Cantonese.