I see/hear what you mean : semantic activation in visual word recognition depends on perceptual attention

Connell, Louise and Lynott, Dermot (2014) I see/hear what you mean : semantic activation in visual word recognition depends on perceptual attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143 (2). pp. 527-533. ISSN 0096-3445

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Abstract

How does the meaning of a word affect how quickly we can recognize it? Accounts of visual word recognition allow semantic information to facilitate performance but have neglected the role of modality-specific perceptual attention in activating meaning. We predicted that modality-specific semantic information would differentially facilitate lexical decision and reading aloud, depending on how perceptual attention is implicitly directed by each task. Large-scale regression analyses showed the perceptual modalities involved in representing a word’s referent concept influence how easily that word is recognized. Both lexical decision and reading-aloud tasks direct attention toward vision, and are faster and more accurate for strongly visual words. Reading aloud additionally directs attention toward audition and is faster and more accurate for strongly auditory words. Furthermore, the overall semantic effects areas large for reading aloud as lexical decision and are separable from age-of-acquisition effects. These findings suggest that implicitly directing perceptual attention toward a particular modality facilitates representing modality-specific perceptual information in the meaning of a word, which in turn contributes to the lexical decision or reading-aloud response.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3200
Subjects:
?? visual word recognitionword naminglexical decisionsemantics perceptual strengthperceptual attentiongeneral psychologyexperimental and cognitive psychologydevelopmental neurosciencepsychology(all) ??
ID Code:
66756
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
25 Sep 2013 13:37
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jul 2024 09:26