Cross Modal Semantic Priming

8/3/2019 Cross Modal Semantic Priming

1/8

LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES, 1996, 11 (6), 569576

Requests for reprints should be addressed to P. Tabossi, Dipartimento di Psicologia, Via

dellUniversita 7, 34123 Trieste, Italy. E-mail: tabossi6psibo.unibo.it

This research was supported in part by CNR Grant Nos 94.04060/ 08 and 95.01841H5. I would

like to thank Anne Cutler and the reviewers for their helpful comments.

q 1996 Psychology Press, an imprint of Erlbaum (UK) Taylor & Francis Ltd

Cross-Modal Semantic Priming

Patrizia Tabossi

University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

The cross-modal semantic priming paradigm is described, including itsunderlying rationale and the different tasks with which it is combined. The

major characteristics of the paradigmthe type of stimuli used, the dependentand independent variables typically manipulatedare then introduced. Also,its main advantages and drawbacks are discussed. Finally, the most importantareas of application are considered and some important ndings which havebeen obtained with it are briey mentioned.

Issues Addressed

Access to ambiguous words, spoken word processing, speech segmentationand sentence processing.

First Uses

Originally introduced by Warren (1972). In its most common form, it was

proposed and tested by Swinney, Onifer, Prather and Hirshkowitz (1979).

Description

Subjects listen to a spoken stimulus (prime). At various times relative to

prime presentation, a visual targetwhich may be semantically related/

associated or unrelated to the primeis presented to them. Primes are

usually embedded in sentential contexts. Typically, subjects perform a

lexical decision task on the visual target. Also, to make sure that subjects payattention to the acoustic materials, they are given a recognition test either at

various points during the experimental session or at the end.


2/8

570 TABOSSI

Stimuli

Primes are spoken ambiguous words (Swinney, 1979), unambiguous words,

ambiguous or unambiguous word fragments (Zwitserlood, 1989), fragments

of segmentally ambiguous speech (Shillcock, 1990; Gow & Gordon, 1995;

Tabossi, Burani, & Scott, 1995) or structurally relevant positions in

sentences, including verbs, pronouns and gaps (Shapiro, Zurif, &

Grimshaw, 1987, 1988; MacDonald & MacWhinney, 1990). Targets are

visual words or pseudowords.

Dependent Variables

1. Lexical decision RTs and errors.2. Naming RTs (e.g. Seidenberg, Tanenhaus, Leiman, & Bienkowski, 1982).

3. Other, e.g. subjects name the colour of a target word (Warren, 1972;

Conrad, 1974; Oden & Spira, 1983; Whitney, McKay, Kellas, & Emerson,

1985). This is known as the Stroop task.

Independent Variables

Ambiguous words

1. Types of lexical ambiguity: category (e.g. noun/verb: Seidenberg et al.,

1982); homophony (Cutler, 1986); balanced or unbalanced meanings

(dominance) (Onifer & Swinney, 1981).

2. Types of context: neutral or biasing sentential context (Swinney, 1979);

types of sentential constraints (Tabossi, 1988a).

3. Timing of target presentation relative to prime presentation: at the offsetof the ambiguous word (Swinney, 1979), prior to offset (Tabossi &

Zardon, 1993), after offset (Swinney, 1979; Simpson, 1981).

4. Relation between prime and target: association, semantic features

(Tabossi, Colombo, & Job, 1987; Tabossi, 1988a; Swinney, 1991).

Unambiguous words and word fragments

1. Words and word fragments: acoustic/phonetic characteristics of the

prime (Andruski, Blumstein, & Burton, 1994; Connine, 1994; Connine,

Blasko, & Wang, 1994); nature and amount of acoustic/phonetic

similarity with other words in the language (Marslen-Wilson &

Zwitserlood, 1989; Connine, Blasko, & Titone, 1993); number of

candidates similar to the prime (Andruski et al., 1994; Connine, 1994);

identication point (Zwitserlood, 1989).

2. Types of context: single word (Marslen-Wilson & Zwitserlood, 1989);biasing and neutral sentential contexts (Zwitserlood, 1989; Connine et al.,


3/8

CROSS-MODAL SEMANTIC PRIMING 571

1994); segmentally ambiguous contexts and embedding (Shillcock, 1990;

Gow & Gordon, 1995; Tabossi et al., 1995).

3. Timing: moment (during or after) with respect to spoken stimulus

presentation that visual target is presented (Zwitserlood, 1989; Andruski

et al., 1994; Connine, 1994).4. Relation between prime and target: associations vs semantic features

(Whitney et al., 1985; Tabossi, 1988b); acoustic/phonetic similarity

(Connine et al., 1993); rhyming (Marslen-Wilson & Zwitserlood, 1989).

Sentence processing

1. Pronoun ambiguity (MacDonald & MacWhinney, 1990).

2. Loci of trace activation (Nicol & Swinney, 1989).

3. Verb complexity and lexical effects (Shapiro et al., 1987, 1988; Boland,

1991).

Analysis Issues

1. The existence (and amount) of facilitatory priming of the visual decision

is assumed to provide information about the processing of the auditoryprime. Furthermore, prior sentential context is assumed to inuence the

prime, and only through this inuence to affect performance on the visual

target (Swinney, 1979; Tabossi, 1988a, 1988b).

2. The facilitation that the prime produces on the target processing is

measured in two ways: Either by comparing performance on the same

target preceded by a related prime in one condition and by an unrelated

prime in the control condition (Marslen-Wilson & Zwitserlood, 1989;

Whitney et al., 1985; Tabossi, 1988b), or by comparing performance on

different targets, one related and one unrelated to the same prime

(Swinney, 1979; Onifer and Swinney, 1981). In the latter case,

performance on the targets outside the experimenta l conditions must be

comparable (similar length, frequency, etc.).

Effects Found with Paradigm

Ambiguous words

1. Lack of syntactic context effects on access

Shown by: Seidenberg et al. (1982).

2. Effects of dominance

Shown by: Tabossi et al. (1987; but see Onifer & Swinney, 1981).

3. Fast post-access selective effects of sentential contextShown by: Swinney (1979).


4/8

572 TABOSSI

4. Some context effects on initial access

Shown by: Simpson (1981); Tabossi (1988a); Tabossi and Zardon (1993).

Unambiguous words/word fragments

1. Multiple early activation of competitors

Shown by: Zwitserlood (1989).

2. Partially matching information can activate lexical candidates

Shown by: Andruski et al. (1994); Connine et al. (1994).

3. Various context effects

Shown by: Zwitserlood (1989).

4. Relevant perceptual characteristics of the initial fragment of the to-be-

identied word

Shown by: Connine et al. (1993); Marslen-Wilson and Zwitserlood

(1989).

5. Context-dependent and context-independent activation of aspects of

word meanings

Shown by: Whitney et al. (1985); Greenspan (1986); Tabossi (1988b);

Williams (1988).

6. Effects of segmental ambiguity within and across word-boundaries

Shown by: Shillcock (1990); Gow and Gordon (1995); Tabossi et al.

(1995).

Sentence processing

1. Assignment of pronoun reference can be slowShown by: MacDonald and MacWhinney (1990).

2. Selective activation of structurally appropriate antecedents

Shown by: Nicol (1988); Nicol and Swinney (1989).

3. Immediate activation of all argument structure for verbs during sentence

processing

Shown by: Shapiro et al. (1987, 1988).

4. Early effects of lexical information on sentence processing

Shown by: Boland (1991).

Design Issues

1. Single word (e.g. Marslen-Wilson & Zwitserlood, 1989; Andruski et al.,

1994) versus sentential context (e.g. Swinney, 1979; Whitney et al., 1985).

2. Subjects task: colour naming (Warren, 1972; Whitney et al., 1985), lexicaldecision (Swinney et al., 1979), etc.


5/8


3. Presentation of the target relative to the prime: at prime offset (Swinney,

1979; Zwitserlood, 1989); after prime ending at different inter-stimulus

intervals (ISI) (Swinney, 1979; Simpson, 1981; Whitney et al., 1985;

Andruski et al., 1994; Connine, 1994); before word ending (Tabossi &

Zardon, 1993).4. Full word vs word fragment: when presented before the offset of the

acoustic prime, the prime presentation is often interrupted at the

occurrence of the target. In this case, the prime is actually a fragment

whose length may correspond to different points, such as isolation,

uniqueness or recognition point (Zwitserlood, 1989).

Validity

1. The paradigm is reasonably reliable.

2. Its rationale has resisted careful scrutiny.

3. It reects local phenomena rather than global sentence effects.

Advantages

1. It relies on a robust phenomenon (semantic priming).

2. It taps semantic activation produced by spoken stimuli on-line.

3. There is little interference with the on-going process of comprehension

by the task(s).

4. It is very accurate time-wise.

Potential Artifacts

1. There may be backward priming effects, although these have not

unambiguously been demonstrated with auditory primes or sentential

contexts (Burgess, Seidenberg, & Tanenhaus, 1986; Glucksberg, Kreuz,

& Rho, 1986; Peterson & Simpson, 1989).

2. With sentential contexts, it is necessary to control the semantic

relatedness between target and individual words of the preceding

context, even though there is no clear evidence that such relatednessaffects task performance (Swinney, 1979; Tabossi, 1988b).

Problems

1. Possible contaminating effect of backward priming effects could be

reduced by using naming rather than the lexical decision task. However,

naming is problematic because of its possible interference with speechperception.


6/8


7/8


MacDonald, M.C., & MacWhinney, B. (1990). Measuring inhibition and facilitation from

pronouns.Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 469492.

Marslen-Wilson, W., & Zwitserlood, P. (1989). Accessing spoken words: On the importance

of word onset.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,

15, 576585.

Nicol, J. (1988). Coreference processing during sentence comprehension. Doctoraldissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA.

Nicol, J., & Swinney, D. (1989). The role of structure in coreference assignment during

sentence comprehension.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18 , 520.

Oden, G.C., & Spira, J.L. (1983). Inuence of context on the activation and selection of

ambiguous word senses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35, 5164.

Onifer, W., & Swinney, D. (1981). Accessing lexical ambiguity during sentence

comprehension: Effects of frequency of meaning and contextual bias. Memory and

Cognition, 9, 225236.

Peterson, R., & Simpson, G. (1989). Effects of backward priming on word recognition insingle word and sentence contexts.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory

and Cognition, 15, 10201032.

Prather, P., Shapiro, L., Zurif, E., & Swinney, D. (1991). Real-time examination of lexical

processing in aphasics.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 23, 271281.

Seidenberg, M., Tanenhaus, M., Leiman, J., & Bienkowski, M. (1982). Automatic access of

the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations of the knowledge-based

processing. Cognitive Psychology, 14, 489537.

Shapiro, L.P., Zurif, E., & Grimshaw, J. (1987). Sentence processing and the mental

representation of verbs. Cognition, 27, 219246.Shapiro, L.P., Zurif, E., & Grimshaw, J. (1988). Verb processing during sentence compre-

hension: Contextual impenetrability.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18 , 223243.

Shapiro, L., Gordon, B., Hack, N., & Killackey, J. (1993). Argument structure processing in

complex sentences in Brocas and Wernickes aphasia. Brain and Language, 45, 423447.

Shillcock, R. (1990). Lexical hypotheses in continuous speech. In G.T.M. Altmann (Ed.),

Cognitive models of speech processing, pp. 2449. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Simpson, G. (1981). Meaning dominance and semantic context in the processing of lexical

ambiguity.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 120136.

Swinney, D. (1979). Lexical access during sentence comprehension: (Re)consideration ofcontext effects.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 645659.

Swinney, D. (1991). The resolution of indeterminancy during language comprehension:

Perspectives on modularity in lexical, structural and pragmatic processing. In G.B. Simpson

(Ed.), Understanding word and sentence, pp. 367385. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Swinney, D., Onifer, W., Prather, P., & Hirshkowitz, M. (1979). Semantic facilitation across

modalities in the processing of individual words and sentences. Memory and Cognition, 7,

159165.

Tabossi, P. (1988a). Accessing lexical ambiguity in different types of sentential contexts.

Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 324340.Tabossi, P. (1988b). Effects of context on the immediate interpretation of unambiguous

nouns.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 14 , 153162.

Tabossi, P., & Zardon, F. (1993). Processing ambiguous words in context.Journal of Memory

and Language, 32, 359372.

Tabossi, P., Colombo, L., & Job, R. (1987). Accessing lexical ambiguity: Effects of context

and dominance. Psychological Research, 49, 161167.

Tabossi, P., Burani, C., & Scott, D. (1995). Word identication in uent speech.Journal of

Memory and Language, 34, 440467.

Warren, R.E. (1972). Stimulus encoding and memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology,94, 90100.


8/8

576 TABOSSI

Whitney, P., McKay, T., Kellas, G., & Emerson, W.A. Jr (1985). Semantic activation of noun

concepts in context.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition,

11, 126135.

Williams, J. (1988). Semantic activation during sentence comprehension. Language and

Cognitive Processes, 3, 165206.

Zurif, E., & Swinney, D. (1994). The neuropsychology of language. In M.A. Gernsbacher(Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics, pp. 10551074. New York: Academic Press.

Zurif, E., Swinney, D., Prather, P., Solomon, J., & Bushell, C. (1993). An on-line analysis of

syntactic processing in Brocas and Wernickes aphasia. Brain and Language, 45, 448464.

Zwitserlood, P. (1989). The locus of the effects of sentential-semantic context in spoken-

word processing. Cognition, 32, 2564.

Documents

Cross Modal Semantic Priming