S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 3016–3022 Friday Evening
paired communicative efficiency more for interactions involving tangrams
than for those involving caricatures. For older adults, the effect
of seeing the partner was particularly pronounced. Direct evidence for
the use of visual availability was obtained by examining patterns of
mutual gaze.
• SEMANTIC PROCESSING OF WORDS •
(3016)
Measuring Semantic Satiation With a Categorical Matching Task.
XING TIAN, University of Maryland, College Park, & DAVID E.
HUBER, University of California, San Diego (sponsored by David E.
Huber)—In the subjective experience of semantic satiation, the sense
of meaning for a repeated word is progressively lost. However, semantic
satiation has proven difficult to measure empirically. Using a
category–exemplar speeded matching task, we developed a technique
that reliably demonstrates an initial speed-up, followed by a later
slow-down when responding to repeated occurrences of the same category
label (e.g., MAMMAL), which was paired with novel exemplars
from trial to trial (e.g., HORSE for match or APPLE for mismatch). This
was achieved within a mixed list of 20 trials that contained 10 repetitions
of the same category label and 10 trials with other category labels.
The transition from faster to slower responding occurred both for
match and mismatch trials. Two follow-up experiments used the same
design but with exemplar–exemplar and word–word matching to determine
how much of this effect is due to repetitions of meaning versus
repetitions of orthography.
(3017)
Multiple, Multiple Primes and the Elimination and/or Reversal of
Repetition Priming. JENNIFER H. COANE & DAVID A. BALOTA,
Washington University (sponsored by David A. Balota)—In two experiments,
we explored the functional relationship between the number
and type of related primes and lexical activation of targets. On
each trial, embedded within a 12-item list, 0 to 12 semantically/
associatively and/or orthographically/phonologically related primes
preceded (250 msec/item) a single target for speeded pronunciation.
On half of the trials, the target was embedded among the primes to assess
repetition priming. Facilitatory repetition priming occurred when
all other primes were unrelated. An interaction between repetition and
semantic priming indicated that repetition priming was eliminated
when six or more related primes preceded the target. Form priming
and repetition priming yielded interactive, albeit inhibitory, effects:
Repetition suppression was obtained for phonologically related lists.
These results indicate that semantically related primes can produce asymptotic
levels of activation (thereby eliminating the standard repetition
priming effect), and form-related and repetition primes synergistically
produce inhibition (thereby reversing the standard repetition
priming effect).
(3018)
Decay of Automatic Semantic Priming From Visible Unidentifiable
Primes in an RSVP Task. PATRICK A. O’CONNOR, JAMES H.
NEELY, & JIAH PEARSON-LEARY, University at Albany—There is
little direct evidence supporting the commonly held belief that semantic
activation decays within 500–700 msec. In three RSVP experiments
in which visible primes, which were not to be reported, occurred
either 80, 240, 720, or 1,360 msec before the to-be-reported
target’s onset, semantic priming was consistently significant at the 80and
240-msec delays and never significant at the 1,360-msec delay.
Thus, automatic activation may last 720 msec but decays to nonsignificant
levels by 1,320 msec.
(3019)
Examining the Coarse Coding Hypothesis: Evidence From Summation
Priming of Lexically Ambiguous and Unambiguous Targets.
PADMAPRIYA KANDHADAI & KARA D. FEDERMEIER, University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign—The coarse coding hypothe-
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sis postulates that meaning activation is focused in the left hemisphere
(LH) but broad and weak in the right (RH). Consistent with coarse
coding, some studies report an RH benefit for activating multiple
meanings of lexically ambiguous words; however, others have failed
to find an RH benefit for processing distantly linked unambiguous
words. To address this issue, the present study employed a summationpriming
paradigm: Two primes converged onto an unambiguous, lexically
associated target (LION–STRIPES–TIGER) or diverged onto different
meanings of an ambiguous target (KIDNEY–PIANO–ORGAN).
Participants made lexical decisions to targets or made a semantic relatedness
judgment between primes and targets. In both tasks, for both
triplet types, we found equivalent behavioral priming strengths and
patterns across the two visual fields, counter to the predictions of
coarse coding. Follow-up ERP studies also fail to support coarse coding,
while pointing to other types of hemispheric differences in word
processing.
(3020)
The Impact of Target Neighbors in Semantic Priming. YASUSHI
HINO, YUU KUSUNOSE, & RURIKA NAKASHIMA, Waseda University,
& STEPHEN J. LUPKER, University of Western Ontario—
Recent results suggest that, when reading a word, the meanings of its
orthographic neighbors are activated. For example, Bourassa and
Besner (1998) reported a priming effect in lexical decision when an
orthographic neighbor of a masked nonword prime was related to the
target. In our experiments, we investigated the impact of the meanings
of the target’s neighbors in lexical decision tasks with masked and unmasked
primes. Lexical decision performance for katakana word targets
was compared in two conditions: when a target neighbor (e.g.,
rocket) was related to the prime (e.g., missile–POCKET) and when no
target neighbors were related to the prime (e.g., school–POCKET). In
addition, in order to evaluate the locus of the effect, we also manipulated
the relatedness proportion. The results support the conclusions
that the meanings of target neighbors are activated and the impact of
this activation can be affected by relatedness proportion.
(3021)
The Effects of Cross-Language Activation on Bilingual Lexical
Disambiguation. ANA I. SCHWARTZ & LI-HAO YEH, University of
Texas, El Paso—The present study examined whether cross-language
activation influences bilinguals’ processing of lexical ambiguity.
Highly proficient Spanish–English bilinguals performed a semantic
verification task in which sentence frames were followed by the presentation
of the final word of the sentence (the prime word). Participants
then decided whether a follow-up target word was related to the
meaning of the sentence. On critical trials, the sentences ended in a
semantically ambiguous word that was either a cognate with Spanish
(e.g., novel) or a noncognate control (e.g., fast). The preceding sentence
context biased the subordinate meaning, and targets were related
to the irrelevant, dominant meaning (e.g., BOOK; SPEED). Mean reaction
times and error rates were greater when the prime words were ambiguous
cognates, suggesting that the semantic representations from
the native language were coactivated and increased the competition
from the shared, dominant meaning. Implications for current models
of reading are discussed.
• SPEECH PERCEPTION •
(3022)
The Time Course and Nature of Listeners’ Sensitivity to Indexical
Information During Word Recognition. MOLLY ROBINSON & BOB
MCMURRAY, University of Iowa (sponsored by Shaun P. Vecera)—
Word recognition is sensitive to noncontrastive acoustic detail such as
speaker identity. Episodic models explain this with lexical entries defined
by exemplars that include speaker-specific and phonetic codes.
Alternatively, such effects could arise from a purely phonetic lexicon
if recognition was calibrated to voices (normalization). These models
were distinguished in a series of visual world experiments. The pri-