Comprehension of antonymy and the generality of categorization models.

Abstract

Three experiments investigated antonym comprehension, that is, the judgment that two words are or are not antonyms. In Experiment 1, the latency of yes responses to antonyms decreased with degree of antonymy. In Experiment 2, no responses to nonantonym pairs were slower for pseudoantonyms (e.g., popular-shy) than for synonyms and unrelated words that did not differ from each other. In Experiment 3, subjects made either antonym judgments or synonym judgments for the same set of antonyms, synonyms, pseudoantonyms, pseudosynonyms, and unrelated words. The no responses were slowest for pseudoantonyms in the antonym task and for pseudosynonyms in the synonym task. Categorization models can explain these results if it is assumed that processing is a function of relationship similarity, the degree to which the relationship between members of a stimulus pair exemplify the relationship being judged by the subject.Comprehension of category relationships has been investigated extensively in recent years, and several models have been proposed that provide fairly good accounts of category comprehension findings (Smith, 1977). The progress made in investigating category comprehension makes it appropriate to consider what kind of model would provide a general account of the comprehension of semantic relationships. A general model should, for example, be able to explain comprehension of relationships like antonymy and synonymity in addition to categorical relationships. Although categorization models were not explicitly designed to provide a general account of semantic relationships, the task of developing a general model may reasonably begin by applying categorization models to other semantic relationships. The general purpose of the present research is to determine whether categorization models can accountThe authors thank Christopher Peterson for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article.

The similarity and diversity of semantic relations

“…For decision models (e.g., Kintsch, 1980;Smith, 1977), the differences among relations are important because each relation might be expected to call into playa unique set of decision criteria (Herrmann et al, 1979). For example, class inclusion decisions, it has been suggested, are based on criteria for inclusion (e.g., McCloskey & Glucksberg, 1979;Smith et al, 1974), whereas antonym decisions require an evaluation of the nature of the opposition (Herrmann et al, 1979;Herrmann, Chaffin, Daniel, & Russo, 1981).…”

“…For example, class inclusion decisions, it has been suggested, are based on criteria for inclusion (e.g., McCloskey & Glucksberg, 1979;Smith et al, 1974), whereas antonym decisions require an evaluation of the nature of the opposition (Herrmann et al, 1979;Herrmann, Chaffin, Daniel, & Russo, 1981).…”

Cortical evoked responses to synonyms and antonyms

“…First, different evoked responses may have originated because one relationship is harder to judge than another (the possibility of such a difference in difficulty does not exist for the stimulus words per se, since each word appeared in both relationship judgments). However, no previous work has clearly shown synonym judgments to be harder than antonym judgments, as measured by reaction time (Chaffin & Herrmann, 1981;Herrmann, 1978;Herrmann et al, 1979). Second, the present differences may have resulted from disparities in confidence between the two relationship judgments.…”

“…Resolution of which alternative is correct might be determined by using a task that would force subjects to consider most or all of the criteria of each relationship; for example, subjects might be asked to identify only the true synonyms and antonyms among pairs of items that contained pseudosynonym ("slow-late") and pseudoantonym ("popularshy") pairs as well (Herrmann et al, 1979). Such a task could not be solved by the mere detection of opposition.…”

“…One of these may be the characteristics of the particular stimuli used. It has been shown that the reaction time to identify a synonym or antonym pair varieswith the judged "goodness" of the relationship (Herrmann, 1978;Herrmann et al, 1979). Some aspects of evoked responses vary with reaction time.…”