ABSTRACT

In this preregistered study, we investigate whether themes conveyed by task partners’ narratives reveal semantic relationships between objects that would otherwise be perceived as unrelated. Such ad-hoc formation of thematic relations should result in semantic interference when naming objects related to the theme in a blocked-cyclic naming paradigm. Participants watch pre-recorded videos of presumed partners narrating real-life events, and then name pictures either thematically related or unrelated to the narrative. Experiments 1 and 2 (N = 32 each) demonstrate semantic interference between objects related to the partner's narrative. Interestingly, this effect emerges only when unrelated pictures are named first. Interference is greatly attenuated, or even turns into facilitation when related pictures are named directly after the partner's narrative. Experiment 3 (N = 32) confirms that semantic context effects disappear when the objects cannot be related to the narrative. Our results demonstrate how flexible semantic processing adapts to context communicated by a task partner.

摘要

在这项预先注册的研究中，我们调查了任务伙伴的叙述所传达的主题是否揭示了对象之间的语义关系，否则这些关系会被认为是不相关的。当在块循环命名范式中命名与主题相关的对象时，主题关系的这种临时形成应该导致语义干扰。参与者观看预先录制的假定合作伙伴讲述现实生活事件的视频，然后命名与主题相关或与叙事无关的图片。实验 1 和 2（N = 每个 32) 表现出与合作伙伴叙述相关的对象之间的语义干扰。有趣的是，这种效果只有在首先命名无关图片时才会出现。当相关图片直接以合作伙伴的叙述命名时，干扰会大大减弱，甚至变成促进。实验 3 ( N  = 32) 证实当对象不能与叙述相关时，语义上下文效应消失。我们的结果展示了灵活的语义处理如何适应任务伙伴传达的上下文。