Sexual content-induced delay with double-entendre words

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Gender Studies

Background:

• Previous research indicates prime-target relatedness facilitates lexical decision tasks.
• The impact of sexual content on cognitive processing, particularly in relation to gender, requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the effect of sexual double-entendres on lexical decision-making.
• To investigate the role of prime-target relatedness, eroticism, stimulus onset asynchrony, and gender on word recognition.
• To propose a cognitive model explaining gender differences in processing sexual stimuli.

Main Methods:

• Participants (73 men, 72 women) performed lexical decisions on target words following sentences with sexual double-entendres.
• Variables included prime-target relatedness, erotic vs. non-erotic targets, and stimulus onset asynchrony.
• Emotionality and social acceptability of stimuli were also assessed.

Main Results:

• Prime-target relatedness facilitated lexical decisions, consistent with prior research on neutral words.
• Erotic material or contextual bias led to slower lexical decisions.
• This processing delay was more pronounced in women.

Conclusions:

• Sexual words may trigger a more complex cognitive processing sequence.
• Appraisal and checking/editing mechanisms, heightened in women, likely explain the observed gender differences in processing sexual stimuli.