A Lexical Representational Mechanism Underlying Verbal Satiation: An Empirical Study With Rarely Used Chinese Characters

Abstract

High repetitions of a character induce a feeling of uncertainty of the character. This phenomenon is named as Verbal Satiation. However, the locus and nature of the verbal satiation remain controversial. To investigate whether verbal satiation occurs at the lexical representational locus, we used rarely used Chinese characters as stimuli to exclude confounding factor of meaning access. Participants were asked to judge whether or not a single Chinese character such as "" is a composition of a rarely used Chinese character such as "." The experiment consists of 4 sets with 11 blocks in each set. Every 20 trials consist of a block, and the same rarely used characters were repeated in half of these trials. To observe the satiation effect that is offset by practice effect with more statistical power, we did ANOVA analysis for each set. The statistical results revealed that subjects responded differently at different time periods. In the first set, participants responded faster in later trials; After that, reversely, participants responded slower in later trials; Then they responded slower for the repeated characters in middle trials; Finally, participants responded slower for the repeated characters without regard to the trial position. These results show a competition process between satiation effect and practice effect and reveal that the verbal satiation can occur at a lexical representational locus.

Keywords: associative satiation; lexical satiation; orthographic satiation; repetitive semantic processing; semantic satiation; verbal satiation.

FIGURE 1

Experimental paradigm. (A) An illustration of the stimuli and procedure of a trial. In a block, which consists of randomly arranged 20 trials, a rarely used character was selected to be presented as cue character in 10 trials repeatedly, and others were selected to be presented as cue character once in the rest 10 trials. In either repeated or non-repeated 10 trials, 5 target characters are matching and other 5 target characters are mismatching. (B) An illustration of trial positions in a sequence of repeated or non-repeated 10 trials. From the second trial to the tenth trial, every 3 trials indicate a trial position.

FIGURE 2

The relationship between indexes of blocks and response time. Shadow area represents 95% confidence bands; 4 sets consist of every 11 blocks divided by the vertical lines.

FIGURE 3

Participants’ behavioral performance in each set. (A) Response time result as a function of position in set 1. Bars represent 1 SEM. (B) Response time result as a function of position in set 2. Bars represent 1 SEM. (C) The relationship between indexes of blocks and response time in set 2. Shadow area represents 95% confidence bands. (D) Response time in repeated condition minus response time in non-repeated condition result as a function of position in set 3. Bars represent 1 SEM. (E) Response time in repeated condition minus response time in non-repeated condition result as a function of position in set 4. Bars represent 1 SEM. (F) Response time in repeated and non-repeated condition. Bars represent 1 SEM.