A normative study for photographs of celebrities in Spain

PLoS One. 2018 May 16;13(5):e0197554. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197554. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Research on familiar faces has recurrently been conducted in different domains, such as, psycholinguistics, memory, attention, face processing, aging studies, etc. In general, photographs of celebrities, their proper names, or their occupations have been the materials mainly employed in those types of studies. These stimuli are, however, very constrained by the geographic and sociocultural contexts in which the studies are conducted, and, in spite of their relevance for psychological research, there are no normative studies for celebrities in Spain. With the aim of filling this gap, the photographs and names of the 118 most frequently produced celebrities in Spain were collected. For each celebrity, values for 13 different indices (including psycholinguistic properties, naming times, and emotional indicators) were obtained from a young adult Spanish sample. Regression analyses on the data indicated that the main determinant in naming times and ToTs was the percentage of correct responses. Face agreement was also a significant predictor of ToTs. Results were compared with previous celebrity norms in other languages, and discussed in relation to the current models of face processing. These norms are likely to make a useful contribution to the design of more controlled research and applied tools in Psychology.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age Factors
  • Facial Recognition*
  • Famous Persons
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Photography
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Spain
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was completed thanks to financial aid provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness to AM (grants PSI2013-46033-P and PSI2017-89324-C2-2-P) and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness to AF (grants PSI2013-42872-P and PSI2017-82748-P). Additional support to AMDA came from a predoctoral grant by the University of Salamanca and Banco Santander (463A.B.01, 2013). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.