familiarity, vocabulary size, and recognition ability in four semantic domains

Fifty‐four American college students were asked to rank four domains (musical instruments, fabrics, trees, and hand tools) with respect to their familiarity with each and to rate their knowledge about the domains on a seven‐point scale. Then they were asked to list all varieties of each domain they could think of in a free‐recall task. Subsequently, they indicated which of the segregates appearing in their lists they could recognize if encountered in a natural setting. Analyses show that the four domains differ significantly in familiarity to the sample, that vocabulary size and recognition ability vary significantly from one domain to another, and that familiarity is a strong predictor of salient vocabulary size, though less so of recognition ability.