Abstract: People process words faster when the meaning of the word has a clear physical or mental representation. Imageability ratings measure how easy a word is to visualize, while sensory experience ratings (SER) capture how well a word can be perceived through all senses. We collected SER and imageability ratings from Wesleyan undergraduates for 248 adjectives that have not been well studied by current literature. Correlation analyses were conducted with eye movement data from the Ghent Eye-Tracking Corpus (GECO). Results support our hypotheses and findings from past research, showing that people spend less time on words with higher SER and higher imageability ratings as their meanings are easier to process. Relations to other predictor variables are discussed. As data from corpora tend to contain noises that may confound or mask correlations, more controlled eye-tracking studies may be needed to validate these effects.
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