Research On The Processing Of Semantic Activation In Intuitive Judgment Of Semantic Coherence

Intuition is an ability which makes people recognize and know something without logically and consciously reasoning. There are two kinds of intuition, one is called General intuition, and another one is called Special intuition. The hypothesis of semantic activation and Fluency-affect model were used to explain the phenomenon of intuition. However, the former theory was only used to explain the phenomenon of coherent intuitive judgment. And there are no systematic experimental studies to test the hypothesis of semantic activation. And the latter was only used to explain intuition at the viewpoint of affect, which ignored the role of semantic activation. Therefore, the aim of this research is to test the hypothesis of semantic activation, and to test the role of semantic activation in the Fluency-affect model. So we have performed three researches which included six experiments. The aim of research1is to design the material of Chinese Remote Associate Test (CRAT) to study the intuitive judgment; The aim of research2is to discuss the role of semantic activation, the characteristics of semantic activation, as well as the effects of the level of semantic activation on coherent intuitive judgment task; The aim of research3is to contrast the effects of the different contrast on the semantic activation and the coherent intuitive judgment. After performing the studies, the major conclusions as followings:(1) The CRAT can be used in the studies of coherent intuitive judgment;(2) The associated word of coherent triads can be activated in the sub-threshold, and the degree of this activation is relatively weak and short; We also find that the additional clues could promote the activation of associated word of coherent triads, which can help the coherent intuitive judgment;(3) The high figure-ground contrast can facilitate the semantic activation of coherent triads, while the low figure-ground contrast could restraint the semantic activation of coherent triad. And we also find that the high-contrast may increase the performance of coherent intuitive judgment, the low-contrast may decrease the performance of coherent intuitive judgment.