Gregory G Holyk | PubMed Health

PubMed2003

Number-of-features effects and semantic processing.

Participants list many semantic features for some concrete nouns (e.g., lion) and fewer for others (e.g., lime; McRae, de Sa, & Seidenberg, 1997). Pexman, Lupker, and Hino (2002) reported faster lexical decision and naming responses for high number of features (NOF) words than for low-NOF words. In the present research, we investigated the impact of NOF on semantic processing. We observed NOF effects in a self-paced reading task when prior context was not congruent with the target word (Experiment 1) and in a semantic categorization task (concrete vs. abstract; Experiment 2A). When we narrowed our stimuli to include high- and low-NOF words from a single category (birds), we found substantial NOF effects that were modulated by the specificity of the categorization task (Experiments 3A, 3B, and 3C). We argue that these results provide support for distributed representation of word meaning.

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The elusive nature of early phonological priming effects: are there individual differences?

Lukatela and Turvey (2000) demonstrated a phonological priming effect in the lexical decision task (LDT) with a 14-ms prime and concluded that phonology plays a central role in word meaning activation. In contrast, several other researchers reported that phonological priming is significant only at much longer prime durations (e.g., Ferrand & Grainger, 1994). In two replication attempts (Experiments 1a and 1b), involving a 15-ms prime duration, we found a clear phonological priming effect in one LDT and no evidence of phonological priming in another virtually identical LDT. In Experiment 2, in an attempt to determine whether individual differences may account for the presence or lack of a phonological priming effect, we also tested phonological and perceptual skill. Only participants higher in perceptual and phonological skill showed a phonological priming effect. We conclude that these (and potentially other) variables may have been responsible for previous inconsistent findings of early phonological priming effects.

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