Orienting Attention to Semantic Categories
Author Information
Author(s): Cristescu Tamara C., Devlin Joseph T., Nobre Anna C.
Primary Institution: University of Oxford
Hypothesis
Can attention be oriented to abstract associative features of stimuli, specifically semantic categories of words?
Conclusion
The study found that semantic orienting significantly improved response times for identifying word stimuli, indicating that attention can be focused on non-perceptual attributes to enhance performance.
Supporting Evidence
- Semantic orienting cues significantly shortened response times to identify word stimuli.
- Both semantic and spatial orienting improved behavioral performance to a similar extent.
- Brain areas associated with semantic analysis were engaged during semantic orienting.
Takeaway
This study shows that we can pay attention to the meaning of words to help us recognize them faster, just like we can pay attention to where they are.
Methodology
Two event-related fMRI experiments were conducted using a cued lexical-decision task to investigate the effects of semantic and spatial orienting.
Potential Biases
Potential biases due to the high prevalence of word trials and valid trials may have influenced the results.
Limitations
The first experiment had a limited number of participants due to hardware issues, and the second experiment's data quality was compromised for some participants.
Participant Demographics
20 participants (12 females, ages 19-31) participated across two experiments, all right-handed native English speakers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision.
Statistical Information
P-Value
p=0.009 for Experiment 1, p=0.043 for Experiment 2
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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