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Related Experiment Videos

Age-of-acquisition effects in semantic processing tasks.

M Brysbaert1, I Van Wijnendaele, S De Deyne

  • 1Department of Experimental Psychology, Universiteit Gent, Belgium. marc.brysbaert@rug.ac.be

Acta Psychologica
|July 20, 2000
PubMed
Summary

Word age-of-acquisition (AoA) impacts semantic processing speed. Earlier acquired words lead to faster responses in semantic tasks, suggesting AoA influences the semantic system, not just speech output.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • The age-of-acquisition (AoA) of words, referring to the age at which a word is learned, is a known factor influencing word processing.
  • Previous research has primarily focused on the role of AoA in lexical access and speech production.
  • However, the extent to which AoA affects deeper semantic processing remains an active area of investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether word age-of-acquisition (AoA) reliably predicts processing times in semantic tasks.
  • To determine if AoA effects originate from the semantic system or the speech output system.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted involving semantic tasks.
  • Experiment 1: Participants generated the first associate to a stimulus word.

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  • Experiment 2: Participants performed a semantic categorization task distinguishing between meaningful words and first names.

    • Main Results:

    • Significantly faster response times were observed for earlier-acquired words compared to later-acquired words in both tasks.
    • This finding held true across both the semantic association and semantic categorization tasks.

    Conclusions:

    • Word age-of-acquisition (AoA) is a significant predictor of processing speed in semantic tasks.
    • The results suggest that AoA effects are not limited to the speech output system but also stem from the semantic system.
    • This implies that the way words are initially learned influences their later semantic representation and retrieval.