What did we learn from forty years of research on semantic interference?
- When participants in an experiment have to name pictures while ignoring distractor words superimposed on the picture or presented auditorily (i.e., picture-word interference paradigm), they take more time when the word to be named (or target) and distractor words are from the same semantic category (e.g., cat-dog). This experimental effect is known as the semantic interference effect, and is probably one of the most studied in the language production literature. The functional origin of the effect and the exact conditions in which it occurs are however still debated. Since Lupker (1979) reported the effect in the first response time experiment about 40 years ago, more than 300 similar experiments have been conducted. The semantic interference effect was replicated in many experiments, but several studies also reported the absence of an effect in a subset of experimental conditions. The aim of the present study is to provide a comprehensive theoretical review of the existing evidence to date and several Bayesian meta-analyses andWhen participants in an experiment have to name pictures while ignoring distractor words superimposed on the picture or presented auditorily (i.e., picture-word interference paradigm), they take more time when the word to be named (or target) and distractor words are from the same semantic category (e.g., cat-dog). This experimental effect is known as the semantic interference effect, and is probably one of the most studied in the language production literature. The functional origin of the effect and the exact conditions in which it occurs are however still debated. Since Lupker (1979) reported the effect in the first response time experiment about 40 years ago, more than 300 similar experiments have been conducted. The semantic interference effect was replicated in many experiments, but several studies also reported the absence of an effect in a subset of experimental conditions. The aim of the present study is to provide a comprehensive theoretical review of the existing evidence to date and several Bayesian meta-analyses and meta-regressions to determine the size of the effect and explore the experimental conditions in which the effect surfaces. The results are discussed in the light of current debates about the functional origin of the semantic interference effect and its implications for our understanding of the language production system.…
| Author details: | Audrey Damaris Bürki-FoschiniORCiDGND, Shereen ElbuyORCiD, Sylvain Madec, Shravan VasishthORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104125 |
| ISSN: | 0749-596X |
| ISSN: | 1096-0821 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Journal of memory and language |
| Subtitle (English): | a Bayesian meta-analysis |
| Publisher: | Elsevier |
| Place of publishing: | San Diego |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2020/06/05 |
| Publication year: | 2020 |
| Release date: | 2022/11/30 |
| Tag: | Bayesian random effects meta-analysis; language production; picture-word interference; semantic interference |
| Volume: | 114 |
| Article number: | 104125 |
| Number of pages: | 25 |
| Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)German; Research Foundation (DFG) [317633480 - SFB 1287] |
| Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
| DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie |
| 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 37 Bildung und Erziehung / 370 Bildung und Erziehung | |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Publishing method: | Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access |
| License (German): |  CC-BY-NC-ND - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell, keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International |
