A word-stem completion task to assess implicit processing of appearance-related information
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Updated: Aug 23, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Marika Tiggemann1, Duane Hargreaves, Janet Polivy
1Flinders University of South Australia, School of Psychology, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia. marika.tiggeman@flinders.edu.au
Objective:
This paper reports on the development and utility of a new implicit measure of appearance-related information processing.
Methods:
A 20-item word-stem completion task was constructed, in which each word stem could be completed with either an appearance-related word or at least one non-appearance alternative. The measure was tested in four different experiments, most investigating the impact of acute exposure to media-portrayed thin idealised female images.
Results:
Exposure to media images or other appearance-related material led to the generation of more appearance- or weight-related words in both female and male samples.
Conclusion:
It was concluded that the word-stem task has empirical utility as a simple, self-paced and sensitive outcome measure in experimental studies of media exposure. We conceptualise the word-stem task as a measure of appearance- and weight-schema activation.
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