Non-semantic contributions to "semantic" redundancy gain.
Recently, two groups of researchers have reported redundancy gains (enhanced performance with multiple, redundant targets) in tasks requiring semantic categorization. Here we report two experiments aimed at determining whether the gains found by one of these groups resulted from some form of semantic coactivation. We asked undergraduate psychology students to complete choice RT tasks requiring the semantic categorization of visually presented words, and compared performance with redundant targets from the same semantic category to performance with redundant targets from different semantic categories. If the redundancy gains resulted from the combination of information at a semantic level, they should have been greater in the former than the latter situation. However, our results showed no significant differences in redundancy gain (for latency and accuracy) between same-category and different-category conditions, despite gains appearing in both conditions. Thus, we suggest that redundancy gain in the semantic categorization task may result entirely from statistical facilitation or combination of information at non-semantic levels.
a Department of Psychology , University of Otago , Dunedin , New Zealand.
Peter
P
Shepherdson
a Department of Psychology , University of Otago , Dunedin , New Zealand.
Jeff
J
Miller
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
Categorization; Coactivation; Race model; Redundancy gain; Semantic processing