Janschewitz Kristin
University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1563, USA.
Behav Res Methods. 2008 Nov;40(4):1065-74. doi: 10.3758/BRM.40.4.1065.
Although taboo words are used to study emotional memory and attention, no easily accessible normative data are available that compare taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral words on the same scales. Frequency, inappropriateness, valence, arousal, and imageability ratings for taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral words were made by 78 native-English-speaking college students from a large metropolitan university. The valenced set comprised both positive and negative words, and the emotionally neutral set comprised category-related and category-unrelated words. To account for influences of demand characteristics and personality factors on the ratings, frequency and inappropriateness measures were decomposed into raters' personal reactions to the words versus raters' perceptions of societal reactions to the words (personal use vs. familiarity and offensiveness vs. tabooness, respectively). Although all word sets were rated higher in familiarity and tabooness than in personal use and offensiveness, these differences were most pronounced for the taboo set. In terms of valence, the taboo set was most similar to the negative set, although it yielded higher arousal ratings than did either valenced set. Imageability for the taboo set was comparable to that of both valenced sets. The ratings of each word are presented for all participants as well as for single-sex groups. The inadequacies of the application of normative data to research that uses emotional words and the conceptualization of taboo words as a coherent category are discussed. Materials associated with this article may be accessed at the Psychonomic Society's Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.
尽管禁忌词被用于研究情绪记忆和注意力，但目前尚无易于获取的规范性数据，可在相同量表上比较禁忌词、有情绪效价的词和情绪中性的词。来自一所大型都市大学的78名以英语为母语的大学生，对禁忌词、有情绪效价的词和情绪中性的词进行了频率、不适当性、效价、唤醒度和可想象性评分。有情绪效价的词集包括积极和消极的词，情绪中性的词集包括与类别相关和与类别无关的词。为了考虑需求特征和个性因素对评分的影响，频率和不适当性测量被分解为评分者对这些词的个人反应与评分者对社会对这些词的反应的感知（分别为个人使用与熟悉度，以及冒犯性与禁忌性）。尽管所有词集在熟悉度和禁忌性方面的评分都高于个人使用和冒犯性，但这些差异在禁忌词集中最为明显。在效价方面，禁忌词集与消极词集最为相似，尽管它产生的唤醒度评分高于任何一个有情绪效价的词集。禁忌词集的可想象性与两个有情绪效价的词集相当。呈现了所有参与者以及单性别组对每个词的评分。讨论了将规范性数据应用于使用情绪词的研究的不足之处，以及将禁忌词概念化为一个连贯类别的问题。与本文相关的材料可在心理onomic学会的规范、刺激和数据存档库（www.psychonomic.org/archive）中获取。
