Relationship between properties of words and elicitation of skin conductance response.

We investigated the association of subject-rated imagery, subject-rated concreteness, subject-rated emotionality, frequency, date of entry into the language, and word length with emotional imagery as measured by the skin conductance response elicited by that word. 50 words in a list of 25 word-pairs were rated by 96 university students; then their skin conductance response of each word was measured for each word. In each pair, one word was concrete and one was abstract but with related meaning, e.g., adolescent and adolescence. Stepwise multiple regression indicated that 30% of variance in the later skin conductance response was explained by imagery and subject-rated emotionality. Imagery alone explained 24% of variance.