Semantic gradients and interference in naming color, spatial direction, and numerosity.

Fox, Leslie A.; Shor, Ronald E.; Steinman, Robert J.

doi:10.1037/h0031850

Cited by 70 publications

(78 citation statements)

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“…Similarly, Shor (1970) found that when subjects indicated the direction of an arrow pointing up, down, left, or right, RT increased compared to a control condition when words located within the arrows were different from the direction of the arrow. Fox, Shor, and Steinman (1971) showed that interference to naming spatial direction decreased as the semantic aspects of the words ranged from incongruent names to space-related words to common words, rare words, and nonsense words. Finally, Palef and Olson (1975) demonstrated that the direction of interference, that is, whether spatial information interferes with judgments of word meaning or words interfere with judgments of space, depends on the relative processing speeds of the two sources of information.…”

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confidence: 99%

Judging pictorial and linguistic aspects of space

Palef

1978

Memory & Cognition

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A test is made of the notion that Stroop-like interference and facilitation effects arise from two different sources, one pictorial and the other linguistic. It was hypothesized that when irrelevant information is pictorial, it interferes with a pictorial code used in the processing of the relevant information; when it is linguistic, it interferes with a linguistic code. The experiment required subjects to respond to (1) the meaning of a spatial word, (2)its absolute position, or (3) its relative position, while attempting to ignore the two irrelevant dimensions of the display. It was found that word meaning and absolute position information affected the speed of relative position judgments in an additive manner. No other Stroop-like effects were found. The results supported the hypothesis under test. It was concluded that the existence of different kinds of Stroop effect must be accommodated by current models of the phenomenon.A useful technique for investigating how people mentally describe and judge space is a modification of the Stroop (1935) experiment, in which spatial rather than color information is presented. The typical finding is that judgments of position or direction are interfered with by words whose meanings are incongruent with the meanings of the spatial displays. For example, White (1969) required subjects to respond to the position of a word that was north, east, south, or west within a square. When the meaning of the word was incongruent with the position (e.g., the word "north" at the bottom of the square), reaction time (RT) increased compared to a control condition in which the word was a nonsense syllable. Similarly, Shor (1970) found that when subjects indicated the direction of an arrow pointing up, down, left, or right, RT increased compared to a control condition when words located within the arrows were different from the direction of the arrow. Fox, Shor, and Steinman (1971) showed that interference to naming spatial direction decreased as the semantic aspects of the words ranged from incongruent names to space-related words to common words, rare words, and nonsense words. Finally, Palef and Olson (1975) demonstrated that the direction of interference, that is, whether spatial information interferes with judgments of word meaning or words interfere with judgments of space, depends on the relative processing speeds of the two sources of information. Words interfere with spatial judgments when they are processed faster than space; positions interfere with judgments of word meaning when they are processed faster.

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confidence: 99%

Judging pictorial and linguistic aspects of space

Palef

1978

Memory & Cognition

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“…In the Stroop task (see, e.g., Fox, Shor, & Steinman, 1971;Klein, 1964), and in the picture-word interference task (see, e.g., Glaser & Diingelhoff, 1984;Guttentag & Haith, 1978;Lupker, 1979;Rosinski, 1977), a distractor word that is semantically related to the target seems to induce more interference than a distractor word that is unrelated to the target. This semantic interference effect stands in marked contrast to the semantic facilitation effect observed in tasks in which subjects are required to read a target word that is preceded by, or presented simultaneously with, a prime word (e.g., Dallas & Merikle, 1976; La Heij, Van der Heijden, & Schreuder, 1985;Warren, 1977).…”

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Components of Stroop-like interference in picture naming

1988

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The semantic interference effect observed in Stroop tasks and picture-word interference tasks might be due to the previous confounding of semantic similarity with task relevance (in the Stroop task) and with perceptual similarity (in the picture-word interference task). A picture-word variant ofthe Stroop task was devised in which the factors of task relevance and perceptual similarity were controlled. The distractor conditions allowed for the examination of four types of context effects. The results show that the overall Stroop-like interference effect can be decomposed into interference effects due to (1) a semantic relation between distractor and target, (2) the semantic relevance of the distractor word in the task at hand, (3) the presence of the distractor word in the response set, and (4) the mere presence of a word. Implications of these findings for the locus or loci of Stroop and picture-word interference effects are discussed. It is concluded that distractor words in Stroop-like naming tasks interfere mainly in the process of name retrieval.In the Stroop task, subjects are required to name colors that are part of, or accompanied by, a printed word (see, e.g., Glaser & Glaser, 1982;Stroop, 1935); in the picture-word interference task, subjects are required to name pictures that are accompanied by a printed word (see, e.g., Rosinski, Golinkoff, & Kukish, 1975;Underwood, 1976). In the Stroop task (see, e.g., Fox, Shor, & Steinman, 1971;Klein, 1964), and in the picture-word interference task (see, e.g., Glaser & Diingelhoff, 1984;Guttentag & Haith, 1978;Lupker, 1979;Rosinski, 1977), a distractor word that is semantically related to the target seems to induce more interference than a distractor word that is unrelated to the target. This semantic interference effect stands in marked contrast to the semantic facilitation effect observed in tasks in which subjects are required to read a target word that is preceded by, or presented simultaneously with, a prime word (e.g., Dallas & Merikle, 1976; La Heij, Van der Heijden, & Schreuder, 1985;Warren, 1977).A conclusion that could be drawn from these results is that a semantic relation between a distractor word (or prime word) and a target will hamper performance in tasks in which nonverbal targets have to be named (as in the Stroop task and the picture-word interference task) but will facilitate perfonnance in tasks in which verbal targets have to be read (as in the word-reading variant of the semantic priming task). Before accepting such a conclusion, it would seem worthwhile to determine whether the discrepancy can be attributed to other characteristics of the various tasks.Further inspection of the Stroop task and the pictureword interference task reveals that in both of these tasks the semantic relatedness factor is confounded with another Requests for reprints should be sent to W. La Heij, Department of Psychology, Unit of Experimental Psychology, University of Leiden, Hooigracht 15,2312 KM Leiden, The Netherlands. factor that might be responsible for the int...

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“…In comparing these results with the results of Fox et al (1971), it was found that mean sorting times (untransformed) and mean naming times correlated .974 for color stimuli, .923 for position stimuli, and .988 for numerosity stimuli. For subsequent linear regression analyses, each mean sorting time was multiplied by 3 because each sorting performance was timed over 24 stimuli, whereas each naming performance was timed over 72 stimuli.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…Correspondence between criterion attributes and sorting locations was specified without the use of symbols. The experiment was conducted exactly like that of Fox et al (1971) except for the crucial difference in the nature of the classification response and concomitant minor differences in procedure. In particular, individual stimuli used in the present experiment were .…”

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Semantic gradients and interference with sorting according to color, spatial position, and numerosity

Fox¹,

Shor

1976

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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Stimulus cards in three sets of decks were sorted according to color. spatial position. and numerosity. respectively. Within each set of decks. decks differed as to the semantic relatedness of irrelevant words or symbols to the criterion properties for sorting. Mean sorting times for the 112 subjects were inversely related to the semantic distances between the irrelevant information and the sorting criteria. These results for nonverbal classification responses are compared with the results of an earlier study in which comparable stimuli were classified verbally.

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Semantic gradients and interference in naming color, spatial direction, and numerosity.

Cited by 70 publications

References 9 publications

Judging pictorial and linguistic aspects of space

Judging pictorial and linguistic aspects of space

Components of Stroop-like interference in picture naming

Semantic gradients and interference with sorting according to color, spatial position, and numerosity

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