On the influence of typicality and age of acquisition on semantic processing: Diverging evidence from behavioural and ERP responses

Judging the Animacy of Words: The Influence of Typicality and Age of Acquisition in a Semantic Decision Task

“…In consideration of the previous ERP studies (Räling, Holzgrefe-Lang et al, 2015;Räling, Schröder et al, 2016) and the present offline results, we argue against a common source for effects of the truly semantic variables (typicality and semantic domain) and the age of acquisition variable. Instead, we assume that the observed frequency-independent age of acquisition effects originate at the link between the input lexicon and the semantic system, while typicality and semantic domain effects have their origin at the semantic level (and word frequency effects at the word form level).…”

“…Based on our previous findings, we expect to replicate the offline results of Räling, Holzgrefe-Lang et al (2015) with a different but comparable item set in a different group of participants. Hypothesizing distinct origins of age of acquisition and typicality/semantic domain, we expect that reaction times should be influenced by typicality (faster reaction times for typical vs. atypical words), semantic domain (faster reaction times for living vs. non-living items), and age of acquisition (faster reaction times for early vs. late acquired words).…”

“…For that purpose, we conducted a semantic living/ non-living (animacy) decision task that did not demand spoken output and recorded accuracy rates and reaction times. In doing so, we expand our previous findings on age of acquisition and typicality (Räling, Holzgrefe-Lang et al, 2015;Räling, Schröder et al, 2016) by adding the factor of semantic domain and by using a different task (animacy decision vs. category-member-verification) as well as a different input modality (written vs. spoken words).…”

“…Holmes and Ellis (2006) showed that age of acquisition effects disappeared when item typicality was controlled in a category-verification task using printed category labels and subsequent target pictures. Moreover, in the first study on either of the two variables involving German native-speakers, Räling, Holzgrefe-Lang, Schröder, and Wartenburger (2015) further disentangled the effects of typicality and age of acquisition within the same experiment gathering offline (accuracy rates, response times) as well as online (electrophysiological) measurements in an auditory category-verification task involving young adults. In this study, we found no significant interactions of age of acquisition and typicality, thus providing evidence for the independent occurrence of both variables in offline response times during category verification.…”

How types of premises modulate the typicality effect in category-based induction: diverging evidence from the P2, P3, and LPC effects

“…Furthermore, typicality has a significant effect on processing time and accuracy during object naming, learning, categorisation, and reasoning123. For example, the verification of a category member was faster if the member was a typical item than if it was an atypical item4.…”