Behav Res DOI 10.3758/s13428-012-0307-9
General knowledge norms: Updated and expanded from the Nelson and Narens (1980) norms Sarah K. Tauber & John Dunlosky & Katherine A. Rawson & Matthew G. Rhodes & Danielle M. Sitzman
# Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2013
Abstract The Nelson and Narens (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 19:338–368, 1980) general knowledge norms have been valuable to researchers in many fields. However, much has changed over the 32 years since the 1980 norms. For example, in 1980, most people knew the answer to the question “What is the name of the Lone Ranger’s Indian sidekick?” (answer: Tonto), whereas in 2012, few people know this answer. Thus, we updated the 1980 norms and expanded them by providing new measures. In particular, we report two new metacognitive measures (confidence judgments and peer judgments) and provide a detailed report of commission errors. Each of these measures will be valuable to researchers, and together they are likely to facilitate future research in a number of fields, such as research investigating memory illusions, metamemory processes, and error correction. The presence of substantial generational shifts from 1980 to 2012 necessitates the use of updated norms. Keywords General knowledge questions . Metacognition . Commission errors Over three decades ago, Nelson and Narens (1980) published normative information for a set of questions over multiple domains of knowledge. They created 300 questions and assessed several cognitive and metacognitive measures, including the probability of recall and the latency to generate a S. K. Tauber (*) : J. Dunlosky : K. A. Rawson Department of Psychology, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, USA e-mail: stauber@kent.edu M. G. Rhodes : D. M. Sitzman Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
response. Their norms have been used widely in research investigating the processes involved in long-term memory (e.g., Fazio & Marsh, 2008; Hanley, 2011; Marsh, Meade, & Roediger, 2003; Murayama & Kuhbandner, 2011; Woltz, Gardner, & Gyll, 2000), those involved in metacognition (e.g., Barber, Rajaram, & Marsh, 2008; Metcalfe & Finn, 2011; Nelson, Leonesio, Shimamura, Landwehr, & Narens, 1982; Schwartz, 2001; Singer & Tiede, 2008; Weinstein & Roediger, 2010; Winne & Muis, 2011), and how all of these processes change over the lifespan (e.g., Cosentino, Metcalfe, Butterfield, & Stern, 2007; Dodson, Bawa, & Krueger, 2007; MacDonald, Dixon, Cohen, & Hazlitt, 2004; Mansueti, de Frias, Bub, & Dixon, 2008; Marsh, Balota, & Roediger, 2005; Metcalfe & Finn, 2012). Given the continued reliance on these measures, our primary goals were to (a) update the 1980 norms and assess shifts in knowledge that have occurred over the 32 years since they were collected, and (b) expand the 1980 norms by providing new measures for the questions. The three-decade gap warrants new data collection in part because knowledge is likely to have shifted in comparison with people’s knowledge in 1980. For example, in 1980 most people knew the answer to the question “What is the name of the Lone Ranger’s Indian sidekick?” (Tonto; 1980 probability of recall = .87). Given that the Lone Ranger was most popular in the early to mid-1900s, it is reasonable that people in 2012 would be less likely to know that Tonto was the Lone Ranger’s sidekick. Conversely, for other information, generational differences may lead to increased knowledge in 2012 relative to 1980. For instance, in 1980 very few people knew the answer to the question “Of which country is Baghdad the capital?” (1980 probability of recall = .07). Iraq, which is the correct response, has been in the news a great deal since the 1990s, most notably in reference to the Iraq war, which began in 2003. Given such generational shifts, researchers should not rely on the 1980 norms.