Age of acquisition and imageability ratings for a large set of words, including verbs and function words

Age of acquisition and imageability ratings were collected for 2,645 words, including 892 verbs and 213 function words. Words that were ambiguous as t o grammatical category were disambiguated: Verbs were shown in their infini tival form, and nouns (where appropriate) were preceded by the indefinite a rticle (such as to crack and a crack). Subjects were speakers of British En glish selected from a wide age range, so that differences in the responses across age groups could be compared. Within the subset of early acquired no un/verb homonyms, the verb forms were rated as later acquired than the noun s, and the verb homonyms of high-imageability nouns were rated as significa ntly less imageable than their noun counterparts. A small number of words r eceived significantly earlier or later age of acquisition ratings when the 20-40 years and 50-80 years age groups were compared. These tend to compris e words that have come to be used more frequently in recent years (either t hrough technological advances or social change), or those that have fallen out of common usage. Regression analyses showed that although word length, familiarity, and concreteness make independent contributions to the age of acquisition measure, frequency and imageability are the most important pred ictors of rated age of acquisition.