Dichotic listening in the study of semantic relations

Abstract

Pairs of synonyms, antonyms, coordinates, and super-subordinates were presented dichotically to university students. They had to report what they heard, after each pair. In one condition, the two members of a pair were presented simultaneously, one to the left ear and one to the right ear, and in another condition, they were presented sequentially. In both conditions, all four semantic relations facilitated more accurate identification, as compared with unrelated control pairs. Of the four relations, antonymy produced the weakest effect. These results suggest that commonality of semantic features aids in the process of auditory perception and that the opposition inherent in antonymy cancels out some of the benefits accruing from this commonality. Associative relatedness aided recognition in the sequential condition, but not in the simultaneous condition. This suggests that the associative link may be a truly temporal one, and only tasks encouraging serial processing are able to activate it.