Visual, acoustic, and semantic processing of word pairs

Abstract

Three Reaction Time experiments are reported in which normal subjects judged the visual, acoustic, and semantic characteristics of identical, rhyme, synonym, and unrelated word pairs. The main results were as follows: (1) Judgments of visual identity were faster than judgments of acoustic similarity which, in turn, were faster than judgments of semantic similarity. (2) Acoustic similarity significantly reduced the speed of semantic judgments and had a similar, but less marked and less consistent, effect om judgments of visual characteristics. (3) Laboratory-induced familiarity with the word-pair stimuli significantly increased the speed of acoustic and semantic judgments, but had no effect on judgments of visual identity, suggesting that visual processing can be performed without recourse to information stored in Long Term Memory. (4) Two of the three experiments yielded evidence for the simultaneous processing of acoustic and semantic properties, and the results of all three experiments indicated that acoustic processing is not a necessary precursor to semantic processing. The results are discussed in terms of the distinctiveness of visual, acoustic, and semantic processing operations.