In: Cognitive Sciences: Volume 5, Issue 2 ISSN 935-8059 Editors: Miao-Kun Sun ©2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. F AMILIARITY , ABSTRACTNESS, AND THE INTERPRETIVE STRATEGIES OF NOUN-NOUN COMBINATIONS Xu Xu 1 and Bing Ran 2  School of Behavioral Sciences and Education 1 , and School of Public Affairs 2 Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg 777 W. Harrisburg Pike Middletown, PA 17057 USA ABSTRACT Conceptual combination refers to the cognitive process by which people combine two or more concepts to represent a new conceptual entity. Literature has studied the primary interpretive strategies of a conceptual combination denoted by two nouns (e.g., robin snake): relation-linking (e.g., a robin snake is a snake that eats robins) and property-mapping (e.g., a robin snake is a snake that has red breast). This study examined two factors in relation to the choice of interpretive strategies in human cognition: familiarity with the combination and abstractness of the two constituent concepts. A total of 49 participants evaluated 240 noun-noun combinations. Both familiarity and the abstractness of the constituent concepts were found positively associated with the likelihood of the choice of relation-linking  Correspondence and requests for reprints: Bing Ran, School of Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, 777 W. Harrisburg Pike Middletown, PA 17057 USA, Email: BINGRAN@Psu.Edu, Phone: 717 948 6057, Fax: 717 948 6320.