Do people access meaning when they name banknotes?

Abstract

Do people access the monetary value of banknotes when they say them aloud? In this study, we evaluated this question by asking people to name sequences of euro banknotes blocked by category or mixed with exemplars of other categories. The participants did not show an interference effect in the blocked context. The absence of semantic interference effect was also observed when participants named euro banknotes that did not have imprinted monetary value. These results suggest a direct connection between perceiving banknotes and accessing their names.

Cognitive processing of currency: Euros and dollars

“…The answer to this question seems to be affirmative. First, we replicated the absence of semantic interference when users of the Euro currency named Euro banknotes (Macizo & Herrera, ). However, this interference effect showed up when participants named banknotes with which they did not have experience: Dollar banknotes.…”

“…In this study, we explored whether semantic processing is required when people say aloud the monetary value of banknotes. Previous work (Macizo & Herrera, ) demonstrated that Euro banknotes can be named without semantic mediation by a direct lexical route similar to that used to name words (Damian et al ., ; Glaser, ) and digits (Herrera & Macizo, , ). The current study shows again that Euro banknotes can be named bypassing the semantic system.…”

“…The Dollar banknotes were also scanned and presented with the side of the banknotes with the portrait of US presidents. To avoid that participants focused on the numbers imprinted on the banknotes, all numbers were eliminated and replaced by a continuation of the picture imprinted on each banknote (Macizo & Herrera, , Experiment 2). The lexical frequency per one‐million count (Cuetos, González‐Nosti, Barbón, & Brysbaert, ) of the pictures names and number names denoting the value of banknotes was similar (70 and 102, respectively), t (23) = 1.00, p > .05.…”

“…Although banknotes are used in multitude of practical situations, cognitive processes underlying the use of currency is scarce. Macizo and Herrera () focused on the production of the monetary value of Euro banknotes. Specifically, the authors asked whether the processing of banknotes required the accessing to semantic information.…”

“…Macizo and Herrera () asked participants to name sequences of Euro banknotes (blocked condition) or to name them intermixed with exemplars of semantic categories (mixed condition). The interference effect with the blocked paradigm was considered an index of the access to the monetary value of Euro banknotes.…”