Abstract

In this study we present some semantic-lexical norms concerning «fruit» collected from normal subjects. Modelling semantic fluency needs norms for all the given exemplars: at least for Italian language, only a few of them are available. The category «fruit» is composed of a limited number of exemplars, and some subcategories can be singled out. On a preliminary fluency task, 84 different fruits were produced, and a further normal sample provided ratings for familiarity, prototypicality and their age of acquisition. Moreover the semantic proximity between each pair of the 32 most frequent exemplars was collected and a cluster analysis has been carried out in order to yield an empirical partition of «fruit» into different subgroups of exemplars. Besides the main models of fluency tasks, some possible advantages offered by these norms in the study of brain-damaged subjects are discussed on the basis of real data obtained from two normal subjects.