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. 2017 Oct;70(10):2094-2104.
doi: 10.1080/17470218.2016.1223704. Epub 2016 Sep 7.

Judging the animacy of words: The influence of typicality and age of acquisition in a semantic decision task

Romy Räling  1 , Sandra Hanne  1 , Astrid Schröder  1   2 , Carla Keßler  1 , Isabell Wartenburger  1
Affiliations

Judging the animacy of words: The influence of typicality and age of acquisition in a semantic decision task

Romy Räling et al. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2017 Oct.

Abstract

The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.

Keywords: Age of acquisition; Animacy decision; Semantic classification task; Typicality.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Mean response times in milliseconds for the control group, depicted as a function of typicality and age of acquisition, with standard errors of means as error bars.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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