Semantic interference from objects both in and out of a scene context.

Abstract

Prior studies have found that, despite the intentions of the participants, objects automatically activate their semantic representations; however, this research examined only objects presented in isolation without a background context. The present set of experiments examined the automaticity issue for objects presented in isolation as well as in scenes. In Experiments 1 and 2, words were categorized more slowly when they were embedded inside incongruent objects (e.g., the word chair in a picture of a duck) than inside neutral nonobjects, suggesting that the meanings of the objects were activated despite participants' intentions. A new interference task was introduced in Experiment 3. When the same objects and words from the first 2 experiments were inserted into scenes in which those objects were probable or improbable, interference occurred from probable pictured objects but not from improbable pictured objects. Implications for theories of automaticity and models of object identification are discussed.

Priming addition facts with semantic relations.

“…The finding that an incongruent semantic context blocks obligatory activation of addition facts may be viewed as quite surprising, as it “flies in the face of any automaticity account in which the specified processes cannot be prevented from being set in motion” (Besner, Stolz, & Boutilier, 1997, p. 221). Yet, a growing body of evidence shows similar modulation effects, be it in word recognition (e.g., Besner & Stolz, 1999), object recognition (Mathis, 2002), or even in cognitive arithmetic (Rusconi, Galfano, Speriani, & Umiltà, 2004). Our results seem to support the conclusions of Besner and colleagues, who, in discussing automatic access to word meanings, have suggested that processes that are considered as obligatory or “ballistic” should, instead, be treated as a “default” that can be overridden by context.…”

“…6We use the terms support and block quite loosely, as the present study cannot illuminate the mechanism by which the semantic context modulates the spread of activation in the arithmetic network. The reader may refer to Mathis (2002) for a thorough discussion of three possible accounts (blocking, slowing, and inhibition) of similar context effects that were obtained in a task involving object identification.…”

Associative and Phonological Priming Effects after Letter Search on the Prime

“…Only the blocking explanation, which more easily accounts for the extant data, poses threats to the claim that semantic and phonological activation always occur, if one assumes that these priming effects reflect spreading activation. (See Mathis, 2002, for a more detailed discussion of blocking, slowing, and inhibition accounts as they relate to object recognition.) However, with any of these explanations it is important to remember that semantic and phonological activation are not measured directly.…”

Contextual interference processing during fast categorisations of facial expressions

“…Semantic information of a background context during object recognition can be extracted within 80 ms (Davenport & Potter, 2004) and was shown to interfere immediately with ongoing task performances (Mathis, 2002). Exploring these instantaneous influences of emotionally associated colours on the recognition of facial affect was, therefore, a first goal of the experiments reported here.…”