Abstract
There is considerable evidence (e.g., Pexman et al., 2008) that semantically rich words, which are associated with relatively more semantic information, are recognized faster across different lexical processing tasks. The present study extends this earlier work by providing the most comprehensive evaluation to date of semantic richness effects on visual word recognition performance. Specifically, using mixed effects analyses to control for the influence of correlated lexical variables, we considered the impact of number of features, number of senses, semantic neighborhood density, imageability, and body–object interaction across five visual word recognition tasks: standard lexical decision, go/no-go lexical decision, speeded pronunciation, progressive demasking, and semantic classification. Semantic richness effects could be reliably detected in all tasks of lexical processing, indicating that semantic representations, particularly their imaginal and featural aspects, play a fundamental role in visual word recognition. However, there was also evidence that the strength of certain richness effects could be flexibly and adaptively modulated by task demands, consistent with an intriguing interplay between task-specific mechanisms and differentiated semantic processing.
Highlights
The ultimate goal of reading is to extract meaning from visually printed words, the effect of meaning-level influences on lexical processing is surprisingly poorly understood
More recent studies employing larger sets of stimuli (e.g., Balota et al, 2004) indicate that semantic effects can be reliably detected in the pronunciation task, they are greatly attenuated. These findings suggest that semantic information plays a stronger role in lexical decision, compared to pronunciation, because semantic information can be recruited to drive the familiarity-based word/non-word discrimination process that is specific to lexical decision (Balota and Chumbley, 1984; Chumbley and Balota, 1984)
SEMANTIC RICHNESS EFFECTS ARE TASK-GENERAL In line with previous investigations, the present study provides further evidence that semantic richness effects generalize across disparate word recognition tasks, broadly consistent with the idea that feedback activation from semantics to orthography and phonology is a pervasive aspect of lexical processing (Hino and Lupker, 1996; Pexman and Lupker, 1999; Pexman et al, 2001; Siakaluk et al, 2008)
Summary
The ultimate goal of reading is to extract meaning from visually printed words, the effect of meaning-level influences on lexical processing is surprisingly poorly understood (see Pexman, in press, for a recent review; see Balota et al, 1991). Word recognition is typically faster for words when their referents are associated with many semantic features (Pexman et al, 2003, 2008), when they are located in dense semantic neighborhoods (Buchanan et al, 2001; Shaoul and Westbury, 2010), when they elicit many associates (Duñabeitia et al, 2008), when they evoke more imagery (Cortese and Fugett, 2004), when they possess multiple meanings (Yap et al, 2011), and when they evoke more sensorimotor information (Siakaluk et al, 2008) That each of these variables affects word recognition behavior suggests that each taps an important aspect of semantic representation. Rich words, which possess more stable and more readily computable meanings (Strain et al, 1995), are represented by the activation of more semantic units, yielding greater feedback activation from the semantic to the orthographic layer; this facilitates word recognition (see Hino et al, 2002, for more discussion of how PDP models can handle semantic richness effects)
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