A tutorial on norming linguistic stimuli for clinical populations

Stimuli norming (the process of controlling experimental items to minimise bias) is important for the validity psycholinguistic experiments. Survey (asking large numbers people rate or otherwise define items) typically used this purpose but requires samples. Clinical populations are not always large, nor easy reach. participants often have ongoing symptomatology, and some cohorts experience language communication difficulties. We present a corpus-linguistic method suitable clinical which survey difficult inappropriate. also include experiment generated, measures metaphor-creation behaviour in schizophrenia test Cognitive Constraint Theory (CCT) nonclinical (see S2.1). describe design rationale before outlining stages tutorial form. This allows us show readers why approach was needed support them consider respond challenges that we encountered. conclude it easier practices parallel when units defined linguistically. Corpus stimuli provides versatile alternative prohibitive, especially speech pathology.