Authors: Iwasaki, Noriko¹; Vinson, David²; Vigliocco, Gabriella²; Watanabe, Masumi³; Arciuli, Joanne⁴

Source: Language and Cognitive Processes, Volume 23, Number 6, February 2008 , pp. 889-930(42)

Publisher: Psychology Press, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

This study investigated whether the semantic similarity and grammatical class of distracter words affects the naming of pictured actions (verbs) in Japanese. Three experiments used the picture-word interference paradigm with participants naming picturable actions while ignoring distracters. In all three experiments, we manipulated the semantic similarity between distracters and targets (similar vs. dissimilar verbs) and the grammatical class of semantically dissimilar distracters (verbs, verbal nouns, and also nouns in Experiment 3) in addition to task demands (single word naming vs. phrase/sentence generation). While Experiment 1 used visually presented distracters, Experiment 2 and 3 used auditory distracter words to rule out possible confounding factors of orthography (kanji vs. hiragana). We found the same results for all three experiments: robust semantic interference in the absence of any effects of grammatical class. We discuss the lack of grammatical class effects in terms of structural characteristics of the Japanese language.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690960801916196

Affiliations: 1: Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Davis, CA, USA,Department of Linguistics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, UK 2: Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK 3: Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata City, Japan 4: Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Publication date: 2008-02-01

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