Distributional analysis of semantic interference in picture naming
Source
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 4, (2017), pp. 782-792ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
SW OZ DCC PL
SW OZ DCC NRP
Medical Psychology
Journal title
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Volume
vol. 70
Issue
iss. 4
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 782
Page end
p. 792
Subject
DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 1: Language and Communication; DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 3: Plasticity and Memory; Neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology; Psycholinguistics; Radboudumc 7: Neurodevelopmental disorders DCMN: Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience; Language in Interaction; Neuro- en revalidatiepsychologieAbstract
In picture-word interference experiments, participants name pictures (e.g., of a cat) while trying to ignore distractor words. Mean response time (RT) is typically longer with semantically related distractor words (e.g., dog) than with unrelated words (e.g., shoe), called semantic interference. Previous research has examined the RT distributional characteristics of distractor effects by performing ex-Gaussian analyses, which reveal whether effects are present in the normal part of the distribution (the mu parameter), its long right tail (the tau parameter), or both. One previous study linked the semantic interference effect selectively to the distribution tail. In the present study, we replicated the semantic interference effect in the mean picture naming RTs. Distributional analysis of the RTs and those of a previous study revealed that semantic interference was present in both mu and tau. These results provide evidence that the effect is not selectively linked to the tau parameter, and they warn against any simple one-to-one mapping between semantic interference and distributional parameters.
Subsidient
NWO (Grant code:info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/NWO/Gravitation/024.001.006)
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- Electronic publications [102080]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [80320]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [27292]
- Open Access publications [70778]
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