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Evidence from partially valid cueing that words are processed serially
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Evidence from partially valid cueing that words are processed serially

Miranda Johnson, John Palmer, Cathleen M Moore and Geoffrey M Boynton
Psychonomic bulletin & review, Vol.30(4), pp.1539-1548
08/2023
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-022-02230-w
PMCID: PMC10482765
PMID: 36547819
url
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02230-wView
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

There has been a longstanding debate about whether lexical and semantic processing of words is serial or parallel. We addressed this debate using partially valid cueing, where one of two words is cued. The cue was valid on 80% and invalid on the other 20% of the trials. The task was semantic categorization, and performance was measured by accuracy. The new feature was to limit attentional switching using a postmask of consonants that closely followed the presentation of words. We found a large effect of cueing and, most importantly, performance for the uncued word was at chance. This chance performance was consistent with serial processing, but not with typical parallel processing. This result adds to the evidence from other recent studies that the lexical and semantic processing of words is serial.
Selective attention Spatial cueing Attention Visual word recognition

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