Cognition Ratings for 8,826 English Words

Many abstract words refer to internal cognitive events or states, such as thinking or believing, or to cognitive products, such as theories, ideas, or whims (Binder, 2016). Mental state information is proposed to be an important component in the grounding of abstract meaning (Kiefer et al., 2022, Muraki et al., 2022), such that our inner cognitive experiences form a foundational aspect of semantic representation. We tested this proposal by first collecting cognition ratings for over 8,000 English words. Then, we used the norms generated from our ratings to examine the unique variance explained by cognition ratings in performance on lexical-semantic tasks. We found a significant effect of cognition, such that there was a facilitative relationship between cognition ratings and behavioural responses, even when controlling for other key lexical and semantic variables. Specifically, words rated as more cognitive in nature elicited faster and more accurate task responses, especially for words with more abstract meanings. This study highlights a novel behavioral effect that is consistent with a multidimensional account of semantic representation.