Selective suppression of taboo information in visual word recognition: Evidence for cognitive control on semantics.

Abstract

The present study investigated the role of cognitive control on semantic information during visual word recognition by exploiting taboo stimuli in a lexical decision task. We relied on delta-plots and electromyography to assess different hypothetical mechanisms of cognitive control. Previous research suggests that taboo stimuli slow down the performance across a variety of tasks, due to their attention-grabbing nature. One possibility is that cognitive control counteracts the detrimental effects of taboo connotation by actively dampening such prepotent yet task-irrelevant information. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found a reversal of taboo interference effect in slowest responses, signaling the deployment of a selective suppression mechanism that needs time to fully accrue. For electromyographic data, we focused on partial errors (trials in which a sub-threshold activation of the incorrect response hand) to index response monitoring processes intervening to prevent and correct errors. We found no modulation of the likelihood of partial errors and, more general, of response accuracy as a function of taboo connotation. Taken together, the results suggest that cognitive control may intervene to selectively suppress fast-acting and distracting taboo information, indicating a controlled semantic processing that optimizes activation to match task-relevant goals.

Prepotent task-irrelevant semantic information is dampened by domain-specific control mechanisms during visual word recognition

“…The taboo-interference effect for words is in line with previous findings (e.g., Carretié et al, 2008;Madan et al, 2017;Sulpizio et al, 2019), confirming the detrimental effect that taboo connotation has on word processing. No taboo interference surfaced with pseudowords, contrary to recent empirical evidence (Scaltritti et al, 2021;Sulpizio Pennucci, & Job, 2020). This discrepancy between the current and previous studies may be due to a critical difference in the experimental setting.…”

“…As mentioned, the Simon effect is known to be larger in the fastest responses and reverse in the slowest ones (for a review, see van den Wildenberg et al, 2010): Cognitive control counteracts incongruent information via selective suppression, a mechanism that needs time to be fully implemented. A similar pattern has been reported for the taboo interference in lexical decision (Scaltritti et al, 2021). Furthermore, previous evidence suggests that the semantic Stroop interference may have a limited impact on the slower tail of the RTs distribution (White et al, 2016).…”

“…This potentially suggests that the habituation effect, that is, the vanishing of the taboo interference in the second half of the trials, may in part reflect an explicit suppression mechanism that, during the course of the experiment, is implemented to attenuate the detrimental effect of taboo connotation. We maintain, in fact, that although the Simon effect and the interference exerted by taboo words are clearly different phenomena, the presence of a similar negative slope in the two tasks-a pattern rarely reported in visual word recognition (but see Scaltritti et al, 2021, for a similar pattern with taboo stimuli)-suggests some similarity in the way cognitive control deals with the two types of interference.…”

“…Notably, in a recent lexical decision study with taboo and non-taboo words and pseudowords, Scaltritti et al (2021) have reported that taboo interference effect has a similar time course. Although the taboo interference and the Simon effect are clearly different phenomena-the former is elicited by a semantic feature of the linguistic stimuli, whereas the latter stems from response conflict triggered by stimulus location-in both tasks participants have to face a prepotent, task-irrelevant feature of the target that hampers the performance.…”

“…This effect has been hypothesised to reflect (post-lexical) monitoring mechanisms that would operate to prevent any erroneous lexicalization of embarrassing and inappropriate taboo distractors. Recent investigations of the two accounts within the lexical decision paradigm have shown evidence which more directly supports an early locus of the effect, at least in the context on visual word recognition (Scaltritti et al, 2021;Sulpizio et al, 2019, Sulpizio, Pennucci, & Job, 2020.…”