Continuous cursor-captured conceptual competition: Investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics of spoken word comprehension

Date

2022-09-30

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer

Type

Article

Peer reviewed

Yes

Abstract

Semantically related concepts are coactivated during spoken word comprehension. Two internet-mediated cursor-tracking experiments examined the spatiotemporal dynamics of this coactivation. Participants viewed visual arrays containing images of a target (e.g., accordion) and a semantically related (e.g., banjo) or unrelated (e.g., plum) distractor whilst hearing the target word (e.g., “accordion”). Participants were tasked with moving their cursor from the bottom of the visual array to the target in one of the upper corners. In contrast to Experiment 1, the onset of stimulus presentation was triggered by cursor movement in Experiment 2. Across both experiments, temporal (e.g., RT) and spatial (e.g., AUC) measures revealed significantly greater attraction to images of semantically related compared to unrelated distractors. These results reveal that online cursor-tracking methods are sensitive to semantic competition and suitable for studying the activation of semantic knowledge during language comprehension.

Description

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.

Keywords

semantic knowledge, language comprehension, mouse-tracking, conceptual competition

Citation

Toon, J., Bisson, MJ., Scase, M. and Kukona, A . (2022) Continuous cursor-captured conceptual competition: Investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics of spoken word comprehension. Memory & Cognition.

Rights

Research Institute