Date of Award
12-16-2015
Publication Type
Doctoral Thesis
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Psychology
Keywords
psycholinguistics, semantics
Supervisor
Buchanan, Lori
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
According to data from three tasks, Danguecan & Buchanan (2014) demonstrated that semantic neighbourhood density (SND; Buchanan, Westbury, & Burgess, 2001) interacts with concreteness to influence visual word recognition response times (RTs). Importantly, these data suggest that the behavioural effects of these semantic variables are differentially impacted by task demands. The goal of the present study was to more precisely chart the flexibility of semantic processing by comparing recognition RTs of words (varying in concreteness and SND) across seven tasks with different explicit semantic requirements. The data show that linguistic associative information is particularly critical for abstract as compared to concrete concepts. These findings are discussed within the context of a new model of semantic processing, known as the Flexible Semantic Processing Hypothesis.
Recommended Citation
Danguecan, Ashley, "Towards a new model of semantic processing: Task-specific effects of concreteness and semantic neighbourhood density in visual word recognition" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5632.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/5632