When does reading dirty words impede picture processing? Taboo interference with verbal and manual responses.

Abstract

Picture naming takes longer in the presence of socially inappropriate (taboo) distractor words compared with neutral distractor words. Previous studies have attributed this taboo interference effect to increased attentional capture by taboo words or verbal self-monitoring-that is, control processes scrutinizing verbal responses before articulation. In this study, we investigated the cause and locus of the taboo interference effect by contrasting three tasks that used the same target pictures, but systematically differed with respect to the processing stages involved: picture naming (requiring conceptual processing, lexical processing, and articulation), phoneme decision (requiring conceptual and lexical processing), and natural size decision (requiring conceptual processing only). We observed taboo interference in picture naming and phoneme decision. In size decision, taboo interference was not reliably observed under the same task conditions in which the effect arose in picture naming and phoneme decision, but it emerged when the difficulty of the size decision task was increased by visually degrading the target pictures. Overall, these results suggest that taboo interference cannot be exclusively attributed to verbal self-monitoring operating over articulatory responses. Instead, taboo interference appears to arise already prior to articulatory preparation, during lexical processing and-at least with sufficiently high task difficulty-during prelexical processing stages.