Conceptual relations compete during auditory and visual compound word recognition

Previous research has shown that compound word recognition involves selecting a relational meaning (e.g. “box for letters” for <i>letterbox</i>) out of a set of competing relational meanings for the same compound. We conducted five experiments to investigate the role of competition between relational meanings across visual and auditory compound word processing. In Experiment 1 conceptual relations judgments were collected for 604 English compound words. From this database we computed an information-theoretic measure of competition between conceptual relations – <i>entropy of conceptual relations</i>. Experiments 2 and 3 report that greater entropy (i.e. increased competition) among a set of conceptual relations leads to longer latencies for compounds in auditory lexical decision. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrate the same result in two visual lexical decision studies. These findings provide evidence that relational meanings are constructed and evaluated during compound recognition, regardless of whether compounds are recognised via auditory or visual input.

过往研究表明，复合词（compound word）识别需从同一复合词的多组竞争性关系语义（relational meaning）中，择取某一特定关系语义（例如针对letterbox的“装信件的盒子”）。本研究开展五项实验，旨在探究关系语义间的竞争在视觉与听觉通道的复合词加工过程中的作用。实验1针对604个英语复合词采集了概念关系（conceptual relations）判断数据，并基于该数据库计算得到了衡量概念关系间竞争程度的信息论指标——概念关系熵（entropy of conceptual relations）。实验2与3发现，当一组概念关系的熵值更高（即竞争更激烈）时，听觉词汇判断任务（lexical decision）中复合词的反应时会更长。实验4与5则在两项视觉词汇判断任务研究中得到了一致的结果。上述研究结果证实，无论复合词通过听觉还是视觉通道完成识别，其识别过程中均会构建并评估关系语义。