Corroborating behavioral evidence for the interplay of representational richness and semantic control in semantic word processing

Laura Bechtold,Christian Bellebaum,Paul Hoffman,Marta Ghio

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-85711-7

Laura Bechtold, Christian Bellebaum + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85711-7

Copy DOI

Abstract

This study aimed to replicate and validate concreteness and context effects on semantic word processing. In Experiment 1, we replicated the behavioral findings of Hoffman et al. (Cortex 63,250–266, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2014.09.001, 2015) by applying their cueing paradigm with their original stimuli translated into German. We found concreteness and contextual cues to facilitate word processing in a semantic judgment task with 55 healthy adults. The two factors interacted in their effect on reaction times: abstract word processing profited more strongly from a contextual cue, while the concrete words’ processing advantage was reduced but still present. For accuracy, the descriptive pattern of results suggested an interaction, which was, however, not significant. In Experiment 2, we reformulated the contextual cues to avoid repetition of the to-be-processed word. In 83 healthy adults, the same pattern of results emerged, further validating the findings. Our corroborating evidence supports theories integrating representational richness and semantic control mechanisms as complementary mechanisms in semantic word processing.

Highlights

Concrete words show a processing advantage compared to abstract words
The main effects were in line with our hypotheses, with faster and more accurate processing for concrete vs. abstract words and contextual vs. irrelevant cues
When Cue was the predictor and Concreteness was the moderator variable, we found that the contextual semantic facilitation effect on reaction times had a descriptively smaller β estimate for concrete than abstract words, both p < 0.001

Summary

Introduction

Concrete words (e.g., butterfly, train) show a processing advantage compared to abstract words (e.g., wisdom, tolerance). This so-called concreteness effect[1,2] (CE) emerged in tasks requiring recall, comprehension and recognition of concrete and abstract w ords[3,4] Theoretical approaches explained this processing advantage as due to differences regarding the information comprised in the conceptual representations of concrete and abstract word meanings. Studies controlling for imageability, context availability and/or familiarity reported an inverse CE, with faster and/or more accurate responses to abstract than concrete words[8,9,10], which neither of the two theoretical approaches can explain Instead, this processing facilitation for abstract words has been ascribed to a higher number of lexical associations[9] and enriching emotional content (measured in terms of higher valence and arousal) for abstract than concrete words[8,11,12,13]. While analyses focused on accuracy/error rates in patients, reaction times in the SJT turned out to be more sensitive to investigate semantic processing performance in healthy subjects[26,33,34]

Objectives

Methods

Results