EXPRESS: Mapping effects in choice-response and go/nogo variants of the lexical-decision task: A case for polarity correspondence.

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110438
Author(s):  
Peter Wuehr ◽  
Herbert Heuer

Previous research has shown that responses to words are faster and more accurate in the go/nogo version of the lexical-decision task (LDT) than in the choice-response version. This finding has been attributed to reduced response-selection demands in the go/nogo task. Here we test an alternative account assuming similar response-selection demands in the two tasks, but an additional impact of polarity correspondence between stimuli and responses in the go/nogo task. Positive and negative polarities have been described as a frequent characteristic of binary stimulus and response dimensions. Only for the go/nogo version of the LDT an apparent polarity difference between go and nogo responses exists, with go responses having the same polarity as words and nogo responses the same polarity as nonwords. Thus, as compared with the choice-response LDT, in the go/nogo LDT go responses to words should be facilitated by polarity correspondence, and go responses to nonwords should be inhibited by polarity noncorrespondence. In the present study, each participant performed a go/nogo LDT and a choice-response LDT. Responses to words were faster and more accurate than responses to nonwords, and—consistent with the alternative account—this difference was larger in the go/nogo LDT than in the choice-response LDT. An analysis of performance by means of sequential-sampling models, that take into account a decaying influence of irrelevant stimulus features, supported the effect of polarity correspondence in the go/nogo LDT. This analysis suggested an effect in the choice-response LDT as well, though of a smaller size and a faster decay.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Marcet ◽  
María Fernández-López ◽  
Melanie Labusch ◽  
Manuel Perea

Recent research has found that the omission of accent marks in Spanish does not produce slower word identification times in go/no-go lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks [e.g., cárcel (prison) = carcel], thus suggesting that vowels like á and a are represented by the same orthographic units during word recognition and reading. However, there is a discrepant finding with the yes/no lexical decision task, where the words with the omitted accent mark produced longer response times than the words with the accent mark. In Experiment 1, we examined this discrepant finding by running a yes/no lexical decision experiment comparing the effects for words and non-words. Results showed slower response times for the words with omitted accent mark than for those with the accent mark present (e.g., cárcel < carcel). Critically, we found the opposite pattern for non-words: response times were longer for the non-words with accent marks (e.g., cárdil > cardil), thus suggesting a bias toward a “word” response for accented items in the yes/no lexical decision task. To test this interpretation, Experiment 2 used the same stimuli with a blocked design (i.e., accent mark present vs. omitted in all items) and a go/no-go lexical decision task (i.e., respond only to “words”). Results showed similar response times to words regardless of whether the accent mark was omitted (e.g., cárcel = carcel). This pattern strongly suggests that the longer response times to words with an omitted accent mark in yes/no lexical decision experiments are a task-dependent effect rather than a genuine reading cost.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Maire ◽  
Renaud Brochard ◽  
Jean-Luc Kop ◽  
Vivien Dioux ◽  
Daniel Zagar

Abstract. This study measured the effect of emotional states on lexical decision task performance and investigated which underlying components (physiological, attentional orienting, executive, lexical, and/or strategic) are affected. We did this by assessing participants’ performance on a lexical decision task, which they completed before and after an emotional state induction task. The sequence effect, usually produced when participants repeat a task, was significantly smaller in participants who had received one of the three emotion inductions (happiness, sadness, embarrassment) than in control group participants (neutral induction). Using the diffusion model ( Ratcliff, 1978 ) to resolve the data into meaningful parameters that correspond to specific psychological components, we found that emotion induction only modulated the parameter reflecting the physiological and/or attentional orienting components, whereas the executive, lexical, and strategic components were not altered. These results suggest that emotional states have an impact on the low-level mechanisms underlying mental chronometric tasks.


Author(s):  
Xu Xu ◽  
Chunyan Kang ◽  
Kaia Sword ◽  
Taomei Guo

Abstract. The ability to identify and communicate emotions is essential to psychological well-being. Yet research focusing exclusively on emotion concepts has been limited. This study examined nouns that represent emotions (e.g., pleasure, guilt) in comparison to nouns that represent abstract (e.g., wisdom, failure) and concrete entities (e.g., flower, coffin). Twenty-five healthy participants completed a lexical decision task. Event-related potential (ERP) data showed that emotion nouns elicited less pronounced N400 than both abstract and concrete nouns. Further, N400 amplitude differences between emotion and concrete nouns were evident in both hemispheres, whereas the differences between emotion and abstract nouns had a left-lateralized distribution. These findings suggest representational distinctions, possibly in both verbal and imagery systems, between emotion concepts versus other concepts, implications of which for theories of affect representations and for research on affect disorders merit further investigation.


1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Pexman ◽  
C. I. Racicot ◽  
Stephen J. Lupker

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Palma ◽  
Marie-France Marin ◽  
k onishi ◽  
Debra Titone

Although several studies have focused on novel word learning and consolidation in native (presumably monolingual) speakers, less is know about how bilinguals add novel words to their mental lexicon. Here, we trained 33 English-French bilinguals on novel word-forms that were neighbors to “hermit” English words (i.e., words with no existing neighbors). Importantly, these English words varied in terms of orthographic overlap with their French translation equivalent (i.e., cognates vs. noncognates). We measured explicit recognition of the novel neighbors and the interaction between novel neighbors and English words through a lexical decision task, both before and after a sleep interval. In the lexical decision task, we found evidence of immediate facilitation for English words with novel neighbors, and evidence of competition after a sleep interval for cognate words only. These results suggest that higher quality of existing lexical representations predicts an earlier onset for novel word lexicalization.


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