How The Related Proportion Influences The Joint Effect Of Stimulus Quality And Semantic Context?

There are two patterns of the joint effect between stimulus quality and semantic context, one is that stimulus quality interacts with semantic context, the other is that stimulus quality is additive with semantic context. The Multistage Activation Model and the Interactive Activation Model can account for the joint effect between stimulus quality and semantic context. When the RP is0.5, both the Multistage Model and the Interactive Activation Model assume that stimulus quality interacts with semantic context. When the RP is0.25, the Multistage Activation Model assumes that stimulus quality has an additive effect with semantic context, but the Interactive Activation Model assumes that stimulus quality still interacts with semantic context. The biggest difference between the two models is the cascaded processing,IM model include cascaded processing while the Multistage Activation Model not. The article aims to explore whether the cascaded processing is correct and which model makes a better interpretation of the joint effect between stimulus quality and semantic context. There are two experiments in the article, both of which used Chinese characters as materials. The experiment1, with the RP is0.5, aims to explore the joint effect between stimulus quality and semantic context, and compare the results with previous studies. The experiment1is the foundation of the experiment2. The experiment2, with the RP is0.25, aims to investigate which model provide a better explanation of the joint effect between stimulus quality and semantic context.Using semantic priming task, the experiment required the students to judge whether the target and the probe were the same character until the probe appeared on the screen, the delayed character-matching task was employed to prevent the N400from the contamination of the decision-related P300.The experiment1contains two factors, semantic priming (related vs. unrelated) and stimulus quality (blurredness of level5vs. blurredness of level6), and the RP is0.5. Recording the ERPs elicited by target when student completed the task. The results of behavioral performance showed that, there was a significant main effect of semantic priming:the responses to related targets were more quickly and accurately than to unrelated targets. There was also a significant main effect of stimulus quality, the responses to level6blurredness targets were more quickly and accurately than to level5blurredness targets. There was no interaction between stimulus quality and semantic priming. The ERPs showed that stimulus quality and semantic priming interacted on N400, the related targets had bigger stimulus quality effect than unrelated targets. There were also semantic priming effect and stimulus quality effect on N400, unrelated targets elicited more negative N400than related targets, and level5blurredness targets elicited more negative N400than level5blurredness targets. The ERPs results indicated that the Chinese characters and English words have different processing mechanism.The experiment2contains two factors, semantic priming (related vs. unrelated) and stimulus quality (blurredness of level5vs. blurredness of level6), and280unrelated pairs of characters were added to make sure the RP is0.25. The behavioral results of experiment2were the same with experiment1, there was a significant semantic priming effect and a significant stimulus quality effect, and the stimulus quality did not interact with semantic context. The ERPs showed a significant interaction between stimulus quality and semantic priming on N400:the related targets had bigger stimulus quality effect than unrelated targets. There was also a significant semantic priming effect and a significant stimulus quality effect identical to experiment1. According to the Multistage Activation Model, when the RP is0.25, the stimulus quality should be additive with semantic context, which is different with our ERP results. The results are against the Multistage Activation Model. When the RP is0.5and0.25, the stimulus quality both interacted with semantic context, RP do not influence the interaction between stimulus quality and semantic priming, the cascaded processing is correct, which is identical with the Interactive Activation Model. The results support the Interactive Activation Model.