Size matters: bigger is faster.
A largely unexplored aspect of lexical access in visual word recognition is "semantic size"--namely, the real-world size of an object to which a word refers. A total of 42 participants performed a lexical decision task on concrete nouns denoting either big or small objects (e.g., bookcase or teaspoon). Items were matched pairwise on relevant lexical dimensions. Participants' reaction times were reliably faster to semantically "big" versus "small" words. The results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms, including more active representations for "big" words, due to the ecological importance attributed to large objects in the environment and the relative speed of neural responses to large objects.
Sereno
Sara C
SC
Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK. s.sereno@psy.gla.ac.uk
O'Donnell
Patrick J
PJ
Sereno
Margaret E
ME
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D012858:Size Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary