title: Judging the animacy of words: The influence of typicality and age of acquisition in a semantic decision task.
abstract: The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.
authors.affiliation: a Cognitive Sciences, Department of Linguistics , University of Potsdam , Potsdam , Germany.
authors.forename: Romy
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Räling
authors.affiliation: a Cognitive Sciences, Department of Linguistics , University of Potsdam , Potsdam , Germany.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hanne
authors.affiliation: a Cognitive Sciences, Department of Linguistics , University of Potsdam , Potsdam , Germany.|b Duden Institute für Lerntherapie , Berlin , Germany.
authors.forename: Astrid
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schröder
authors.affiliation: a Cognitive Sciences, Department of Linguistics , University of Potsdam , Potsdam , Germany.
authors.forename: Carla
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Keßler
authors.affiliation: a Cognitive Sciences, Department of Linguistics , University of Potsdam , Potsdam , Germany.
authors.forename: Isabell
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Wartenburger
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Age of acquisition; Animacy decision; Semantic classification task; Typicality