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Number-of-features effects and semantic processing
Penny M Pexman1, Gregory G Holyk, Marie-H Monfils
1Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. pexman@ucalgary.ca
Memory & Cognition
|December 4, 2003
Summary
The number of semantic features (NOF) influences how words are processed. High NOF words show stronger effects in semantic tasks, supporting distributed word meaning representations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Previous research indicates concrete nouns have more semantic features than abstract ones.
- Studies show a link between the number of features and word processing speed.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of the number of semantic features (NOF) on semantic processing.
- To determine if NOF effects are modulated by contextual congruence and task specificity.
Main Methods:
- Utilized self-paced reading tasks with varying contextual congruence.
- Employed semantic categorization tasks (concrete vs. abstract).
- Analyzed high- and low-NOF words within a specific category (birds) across multiple experiments.
Main Results:
- Number of features (NOF) effects were observed in tasks with non-congruent context and semantic categorization.
- NOF effects were substantial and modulated by task specificity when stimuli were limited to a single category.
- Faster responses were noted for high NOF words in prior lexical decision tasks.
Conclusions:
- The number of semantic features significantly impacts semantic processing.
- Findings support a distributed representation model of word meaning.
- Context and task demands interact with feature information during word comprehension.
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