On the categorical nature of the semantic interference effect…关于语义干扰效应的分类性质.pdfVIP

Psychonomic Bulletin Review 2005, 12 (1), 125-131 On the categorical nature of the semantic interference effect in the picture–word interference paradigm ALBERT COSTA Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain F.-XAVIER ALARIO CNRS and Université de Provence, Marseille, France and ALFONSO CARAMAZZA Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Two picture–word interference experiments are reported in which the boundaries of the semantic interference effect are explored. In both experiments, participants named pictures (e.g., a picture of a car) that appeared with superimposed word distractors. Distractor words from the same semantic category as the word for the picture (e.g., CAR) produced semantic interference, whereas semantically related distractors from a different category (e.g., BUMPER) led to semantic facilitation. In Experiment 2, the se- mantic facilitation from semantically related distractors was replicated. These results indicate that a semantic relationship between picture and distractor does not necessarily lead to interference and in fact can lead to facilitation. In all but one case tested until now, a semantic relationship between pic- ture and distractor has led to semantic facilitation. The implications of these results for the assump- tion that the semantic interference effect arises as a consequence of lexical competition are discussed. The picture–word interference paradigm, in wh