Paul D. Siakaluk

There are many ways to be rich: Effects of three measures of semantic richness on visual word recognition

Previous studies have reported that semantic richness facilitates visual word recognition (see, e.g., Buchanan, Westbury, & Burgess, 2001; Pexman, Holyk, & Monfils, 2003). We compared three semantic richness measures—number of semantic neighbors (NSN), the number of words appearing in similar lexical contexts; number of features (NF), the number of features listed for a word’s referent; and contextual dispersion (CD), the distribution of a word’s occurrences across content areas—to determine their abilities to account for response time and error variance in lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks. NF and CD accounted for unique variance in both tasks, whereas NSN accounted for unique variance only in the lexical decision task. Moreover, each measure showed a different pattern of relative contribution across the tasks. Our results provide new clues about how words are represented and suggest that word recognition models need to accommodate each of these influences.

Evidence for the activation of sensorimotor information during visual word recognition: The body–object interaction effect

We examined the effects of sensorimotor experience in two visual word recognition tasks. Body-object interaction (BOI) ratings were collected for a large set of words. These ratings assess perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a words referent. A set of high BOI words (e.g., mask) and a set of low BOI words (e.g., ship) were created, matched on imageability and concreteness. Facilitatory BOI effects were observed in lexical decision and phonological lexical decision tasks: responses were faster for high BOI words than for low BOI words. We discuss how our findings may be accounted for by (a) semantic feedback within the visual word recognition system, and (b) an embodied view of cognition (e.g., Barsalous perceptual symbol systems theory), which proposes that semantic knowledge is grounded in sensorimotor interactions with the environment.

Body—object interaction ratings for 1,618 monosyllabic nouns

Body-object interaction (BOI) assesses the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word’s referent. Recent research has shown that BOI influences visual word recognition processes in such a way that responses to high-BOI words (e.g., couch) are faster and less error prone than responses to low-BOI words (e.g., cliff ). Importantly, the high-BOI words and the low-BOI words that were used in those studies were matched on imageability. In the present study, we collected BOI ratings for a large set of words. BOI ratings, on a 1–7 scale, were obtained for 1,618 monosyllabic nouns. These ratings allowed us to test the generalizability of BOI effects to a large set of items, and they should be useful to researchers who are interested in manipulating or controlling for the effects of BOI. The body-object interaction ratings for this study may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society’s Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.

The Benefits of Sensorimotor Knowledge: Body-Object Interaction Facilitates Semantic Processing

This article examined the effects of body-object interaction (BOI) on semantic processing. BOI measures perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a words referent. In Experiment 1, BOI effects were examined in 2 semantic categorization tasks (SCT) in which participants decided if words are easily imageable. Responses were faster and more accurate for high BOI words (e.g., mask) than for low BOI words (e.g., ship). In Experiment 2, BOI effects were examined in a semantic lexical decision task (SLDT), which taps both semantic feedback and semantic processing. The BOI effect was larger in the SLDT than in the SCT, suggesting that BOI facilitates both semantic feedback and semantic processing. The findings are consistent with the embodied cognition perspective (e.g., Barsalous, 1999, Perceptual Symbols Theory), which proposes that sensorimotor interactions with the environment are incorporated in semantic knowledge.

The effect of semantic distance in yes/no and go/no-go semantic categorization tasks.

The effect of semantic distance (Lund & Burgess, 1996) was examined in three semantic categorization experiments. Experiment 1, a yes/no task that required participants to make animal/nonanimal judgments by responding to both sets of stimuli (Forster & Shen, 1996), revealed no effect of semantic distance. Experiment 2, a go/no-go task that required participants to respond to only the experimental (i.e., nonanimal) items, revealed a large effect of semantic distance. In addition, response latencies were longer and error rates were lower to the experimental items in Experiment 2 than to those in Experiment 1. These findings were replicated in Experiment 3, in which semantic distance and task condition were manipulated within subjects. We conclude that these results are consistent with (1) the view that the go/no-go tasks elicited more extensive processing of the experimental items and (2) a connectionist account of semantic activation, whereby processing is facilitated by the presence of semantic neighbors.

Effects of emotional and sensorimotor knowledge in semantic processing of concrete and abstract nouns

There is much empirical evidence that words’ relative imageability and body-object interaction (BOI) facilitate lexical processing for concrete nouns (e.g., Bennett et al., 2011). These findings are consistent with a grounded cognition framework (e.g., Barsalou, 2008), in which sensorimotor knowledge is integral to lexical processing. In the present study, we examined whether lexical processing is also sensitive to the dimension of emotional experience (i.e., the ease with which words evoke emotional experience), which is also derived from a grounded cognition framework. We examined the effects of emotional experience, imageability, and BOI in semantic categorization for concrete and abstract nouns. Our results indicate that for concrete nouns, emotional experience was associated with less accurate categorization, whereas imageability and BOI were associated with faster and more accurate categorization. For abstract nouns, emotional experience was associated with faster and more accurate categorization, whereas BOI was associated with slower and less accurate categorization. This pattern of results was observed even with many other lexical and semantic dimensions statistically controlled. These findings are consistent with Vigliocco et al.’s (2009) theory of semantic representation, which states that emotional knowledge underlies meanings for abstract concepts, whereas sensorimotor knowledge underlies meanings for concrete concepts.

Orthographic neighborhood effects in lexical decision: The effects of nonword orthographic neighborhood size

The effects of large neighborhoods (neighborhood size) and of higher frequency neighbors (neighborhood frequency) were examined as a function of nonword neighborhood size in lexical decision tasks. According to the multiple read-out model (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996), neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects should vary systematically as a function of nonword neighborhood size. In these experiments, the nonword context was more extensively manipulated than in previous studies, providing a more complete test of the models predictions. In addition, simulations were conducted examining the models ability to account for the facilitatory neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects observed in these experiments. The results suggest that the model overestimates the role of inhibition in the orthographic processing of English words.

Imageability and body-object interaction ratings for 599 multisyllabic nouns

We collected imageability and body–object interaction (BOI) ratings for 599 multisyllabic nouns. We then examined the effects of these variables on a subset of these items in picture-naming, word-naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization. Picture-naming latencies were taken from the International Picture-Naming Project database (Szekely, Jacobsen, D’Amico, Devescovi, Andonova, Herron, et al. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 247–250, 2004), word-naming and lexical decision latencies were taken from the English Lexicon Project database (Balota, Yap, Cortese, Hutchison, Kessler, Loftis, et al. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445–459, 2007), and we collected semantic categorization latencies. Results from hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that imageability and BOI separately accounted for unique latency variability in each task, even with several other predictor variables (e.g., print frequency, number of syllables and morphemes, age of acquisition) entered first in the analyses. These ratings should be useful to researchers interested in manipulating or controlling for the effects of imageability and BOI for multisyllabic stimuli in lexical and semantic tasks.

Is there an Effect of Print Exposure on the Word Frequency Effect and the Neighborhood Size Effect

Orthographic and phonological processing skills have been shown to vary as a function of reader skill (Stanovich & West, Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 402–433, 1989; Unsworth & Pexman, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56A, 63–81, 2003). One variable known to contribute to differences between readers of higher and lower skill is amount of print exposure: higher skilled readers read more often than lower skilled readers, and their increased print exposure is associated with faster responding to words and nonwords in lexical decision tasks. The present experiments examined the effect of print exposure on the word frequency effect and neighborhood size effect. We conclude that the different outcomes reported in previous studies (Chateau & Jared, Memory and Cognition, 28, 143–153, 2000; Lewellen, Goldinger, Pisoni, & Greene, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 316–330, 1993) were due to the type of nonwords used in the lexical decision task (regular nonwords versus pseudohomophones). Our results are explained in terms of differences in the reliance on orthographic and phonological information between readers of higher and lower print exposure.

Effects of emotional experience for abstract words in the Stroop task.

In this study, we examined the effects of emotional experience, a relatively new dimension of emotional knowledge that gauges the ease with which words evoke emotional experience, on abstract word processing in the Stroop task. In order to test the context-dependency of these effects, we accentuated the saliency of this dimension in Experiment 1A by blocking the stimuli such that one block consisted of the stimuli with the highest emotional experience ratings and the other block consisted of the stimuli with the lowest emotional experience ratings. We attenuated the saliency of this dimension in Experiment 1B by intermixing the stimuli. We observed slower color naming performance for words with higher emotional experience ratings only in Experiment 1A, suggesting that the dimension of emotional experience is an aspect of semantic representation for abstract words but that its influence can be modulated by context. We interpret these results more generally using Vigliocco, Meteyard, Andrews, and Koustas (2009) framework of semantic representation, and more specifically using Cohen, Dunbar, and McClellands (1990) model of Stroop task performance.