Redundancy gain for semantic features

Abstract

In a go/no-go experiment, semantic redundancy gain was assessed for responses to single written words. Specifically, we asked participants to respond only to words whose meaning matched at least one semantic target featurethat is, the target category (e.g., animal), the target color (e.g., gray), or both. On redundant-target trials, the word (e.g., elephant) matched both semantic target features (i.e., gray and animal). On single-target trials, the word (e.g., beaver) matched one target feature (i.e., animal) and a nontarget feature (i.e., brown). We observed shorter reaction times in the redundant-target condition than in the faster single-target condition. Hence, the present study provides the first evidence that redundancy gain is not limited to responses to redundant proximal stimulus features but can also be observed for responses to semantic feature information.

Non-semantic contributions to “semantic” redundancy gain

“…Shepherdson and Miller tested the RMI in each of their experiments; in no case were significant violations found, so race models could not be ruled out. This was also the case for the experiments conducted by Fiedler et al (2013). As Shepherdson and Miller (2014) acknowledged, however, an absence of RMI violations can be consistent with both race and coactivation model accounts, meaning both separate and joint activation accounts of redundancy gain in semantic categorization are possible.…”

“…A race model has also been forwarded by Fiedler et al (2013) as the most likely explanation of redundancy gain in another semantic task. These authors presented participants with single words, and asked them to make responses when the meaning of these words matched either a target category, a target colour, or both (with responses withheld for words that matched neither semantic feature).…”

Explaining dual-action benefits: Inhibitory control and redundancy gains as complementary mechanisms.

“…Egeth & Mordkoff, 1991;Miller, 1982;Raab, 1962). Crucially, a similar effect has been observed when just a single stimulus is presented, but two features of that stimulus are used to trigger a response: for example, RTs are lower when participants react to the word "elephant" under instructions to press a button whenever a word referring to something gray or an animal is presented than when instructed to look for only one of these features ("semantic RAETTIG AND HUESTEGGE 14 redundancy gain," Fiedler et al, 2013;Schröter et al, 2015). The most basic explanation for this phenomenon is simple statistical facilitation, that is, when a response is triggered by the faster of two parallel and independent processes, this is-on average-faster than only relying on either one process.…”