Lexical representation of fact and opinion

The semantic basis of fact/opinion judgments was examined in 2 experiments. In experiment 1, 6 questionnaires were designed, each presenting a list of 89 words familiar to undergraduate Ss (N = 180). One questionnaire asked Ss to distinguish fact & opinion words, while the other 5 asked Ss to ra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of psycholinguistic research 1985, Vol.14 (1), p.81-95
Main Authors: HERMANN, D. J, RUBENFELD, L. S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Language
Production and perception of spoken language
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
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Summary:The semantic basis of fact/opinion judgments was examined in 2 experiments. In experiment 1, 6 questionnaires were designed, each presenting a list of 89 words familiar to undergraduate Ss (N = 180). One questionnaire asked Ss to distinguish fact & opinion words, while the other 5 asked Ss to rate the words on 5 dimensions. Fact/opinion judgments were reliable, & the strongest predictor of judgments was verifiability, followed by word literalness. The generality of these results was tested in experiment 2 in which a nonexplicit discrimination task was used. Ss (N = 34) were given a list of words & asked to indicate whether each would appear on the front page or the editorial page of a newspaper. The headline ratings were consistent with the fact /opinion judgments obtained in experiment 1. It is concluded that the basis of fact/opinion judgments is verifiability. 4 Tables, 26 References. B. Annesser Murray
ISSN:0090-6905
1573-6555
DOI:10.1007/BF01067476