Semantic satiation in an addition task.

Jakobovits, Leon A.; Lambert, Wallace E.

doi:10.1037/h0083238

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…It would seem, therefore, that it is not an appropriate control in comparison with the Satiation condition and other controls, none of which involves a rapid switch in stimuli to be rated. In cases where one is mainly interested in the effect of such a switch on encoding and decoding procesaes (as was the case in the bilingual study of Jakobovits & Lambert, 1962), the procedure is appropriate and particularly valuable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One purpose of the present study was to examine its effectiveness as a method of differentiating the distinctive features of numbers as well as words. In a recent study, Jakobovits & Lambert (1962) argued that the meaning of numbers could be reduced through their continuous use, much as the meaning of words can be satiated (Lambert & Jakobovits, 1960). It was demonstrated that continuous verbal repetition of a number such as ' 7 ' prior to its occurrence in a simple addition problem ( 7 + 4 = 2) increased the time taken to add.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Semantic Satiation of Words and Numbers*

Messer¹,

Jakobovits²,

Kanungo³

et al. 1964

British J of Psychology

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One purpose of the study reported is to compare the effect of continuous verbal repetition on the semantic ratings of words and numbers. A second is to examine the effectiveness of the semantic differential to index distinctive features of numbers as well as words. The procedure used is parallel to an earlier study on semantic satiation with words with the notable difference that, in the present case, a completely mechanized method is developed to present stimuli and record rating responses and their latencies. The following main findings are reported: (1) Regular semantic differential wales reflect significant satiation effects with words, but not with numbers, while a ‘Meaningful‐Meaningless’ scale indexes significant shifts toward the ‘Meaningless’ pole with numbers, but not with words. (2) Certain differences are observed between words and numbers in the manner in which these are rated on standard semantic differential scales. (3) The M‐shaped relationship between response latency and scale position reported earlier by Osgood is confirmed in the present paper. The implications of these findings in relation to the earlier study and with respect to the applicability of the semantic differential to numbers are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic Satiation of Words and Numbers*

Messer¹,

Jakobovits²,

Kanungo³

et al. 1964

British J of Psychology

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“…In another study, (Jakobovits and Lambert, 1962a) using the verbal repetition procedure with digits as stimuli, evidence was obtained of an increase in the latency of solution of computational tasks which involve satiated digits. Such findings, according to the authors, may be considered analogous to the decrease of semantic ratings of words after their continuous repetition.…”

Section: The Phenomenon Of Semantic Satiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic satiation and paired-associate learning.

Kanungo¹,

Lambert²,

Mauer³

1962

Journal of Experimental Psychology

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTIn the course of this research work many have helped me, to whom I can only inadequately express my gratitude.To my advisor, Dr. Wallace E. Lambert, whose careful and constant guidance made completion of this thesis possible, my debt is too great ever to be repaid. INTRODUCTIONThe normal human perceives his environment as a stable and meaningful world of objects, persons, and events, whereas for a newborn child, the same environment probably appears as an aggregate of meaningless shapes and movements. These differences in perceptions are attributable to differences in experiences and contacts with the environment. Through repeated contacts, the individual gradually learns to perceive stimuli in predictable relations and is able to improve his future reactions to the same or similar stimuli.In other words, perceiving meaningful elements in one's environment consciousness within a few seconds after the fixation began. They also pointed out that the meaning of the word vanished when its proper sound image disappeared, and that the disappearance was due to a shifting of attention from one part of the visually perceived word to another. For instance, for their subjects, the word "castle" became "cast-le", the word "toward" became "to-ward," and so on. They also noticed that with prolonged visual fixation a word may look familiar and yet may cease to have any meaning. The authors, following Titchener, interpreted the findings in terms of the "core-contextn theory of meaning. For them the meaning of a word was determined by the associated ideas (context) that word evokes when presented to the subject. Thus they differentiated "meaning" from "familiarity," and they argued that their experiments clearly demonstrated the fact that familiarity does not necessarily involve associated ideas. In other words, prolonged visual fixation of a word leads to loss of meaning or "associative power" in a word without apparent loss of familiarity.Bassett and Warne (1919) used a continued verbal repetition procedure and found that with repetition the word !ost both its meaning and familiarity. The word after continued repetition appeared devoid of any sense and appeared foreign to their subjects. When the meaning of a word dropped away, subjects reported their experience to be very similar to that of encountering a nonsense syllable or a combination of sounds which was neither familiar nor unfamiliar. Occasionally the subjects reported "a feeling of blankness" probably due to the persistence of the sheer sound of the word. The meaning of the word was thus forced into the -6--background and the word lost its distinctiveness.

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“…Such a phenomenon is of interest because it suggests that the lexical or semantic representation of a word is susceptible to fatigue through continuous activation, thus slowing any cognitive operations that rely on the word's meaning. For example, in one experiment it was found that continuous repetition of the number 7 prior to adding 7 + 7 increases response time compared to a condition of repeating the number I (Jakabovitz & Lambert, 1962). In general, if awareness of a word's meaning can be equated with activating the underlying semantic representation, then any measure of decrement in meaning that is used to monitor the extent of lexical fatigue would, in effect, also be measuring the extent of semantic satiation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Semantic satiation revisited with a lexical decision task

1978

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The semantic satiation hypothesis suggests that continuous verbalization of a word leads to a reduction in its meaning. This hypothesis was examined by having subjects repeat a priming word either once or for 30 sec prior to making a word-nonword lexical decision about a visually presented target. The primes were associated with (Experiments 1 and 3), identical to (Experiment 2), or unassociated with the word targets. As is usually found, target lexical decision times were significantly facilitated by oral priming with both the associated and identical words. While the magnitude of this facilitation effect was reduced slightly by continuous repetition of the prime in Experiment I, no such reduction was observed in Experiments 2 and 3. These results are discussed in the context of a two-factor theory of semantic processing with the aid of Morton's logogen model. It was concluded that semantic satiation may not be semantic at all.

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Semantic satiation in an addition task.

Cited by 23 publications

References 8 publications

Semantic Satiation of Words and Numbers*

Semantic Satiation of Words and Numbers*

Semantic satiation and paired-associate learning.

Semantic satiation revisited with a lexical decision task

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