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Semantic processing in visual word recognition: activation blocking and domain specificity.

M S Brown1, M A Roberts, D Besner

  • 1University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. ms2brown@watarts.uwaterloo.ca

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|February 19, 2002
PubMed
Summary
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Semantic priming, which aids word recognition, is blocked by concurrent letter search tasks. This study found that this blocking effect is general and domain-specific, contradicting theories of context-independent semantic activation.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Lexical decision tasks show semantic priming effects when primes are read.
  • Priming is eliminated when participants perform a letter search on the prime simultaneously.
  • This elimination is hypothesized to result from activation blocking between representational levels.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the nature of activation blocking in semantic priming.
  • To test competing accounts of priming elimination during concurrent tasks.
  • To examine whether semantic activation is context-independent and capacity-free.

Main Methods:

  • Three experiments were conducted using a prime search paradigm.
  • A task-irrelevant word was added to the prime search task.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Participant responses in lexical decision tasks were analyzed.

    • Main Results:

    • Results supported the view that activation blocking is general to a representational level, not item-specific.
    • Findings were consistent with activation blocking being domain-specific.
    • Evidence contradicted the claim that semantic activation is context-independent and capacity-free.

    Conclusions:

    • Activation blocking during concurrent tasks is a general, domain-specific phenomenon.
    • Semantic priming is influenced by task demands and processing levels.
    • The findings challenge models positing context-independent semantic activation.