Relevance and Feature Accessibility in Combined Concepts

Abstract

When comprehending combined concepts (e.g., ‘peeled apples’), two kinds of features are potentially accessible. Phrase features are true only of the phrase (e.g., “white”), while noun features are true of both the phrase and the head noun (e.g., “round”). Phrase features are verified more quickly and more accurately than noun features. No satisfactory account of this phrase feature priority has been put forth. We propose that relevance can explain the phrase feature priority. In Experiment 1, the differential accessibility of noun and phrase features was reversed by context paragraphs that made noun features relevant. Experiment 2 more subtly replicated this effect using a single-word context. We conclude that the phrase feature priority is attributable to the discourse strategy of assigning relevance to modifiers of combined concepts.