Picture categorizing processing in a cross-modal interference task

要旨

By using a cross-modal, auditory-visual picture-word interference task, two experiments were conducted to examine how picture categorization proceeds. To clarify the various conditions under which interference effects are expected to rise, several types of different degrees of picture-word semantic relation and the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were varied, and the comparison between auditory-visual and visual-visual task was made. Two types of distracting words were used; names of pictures (Exp. 1) or categories (Exp. 2). Twenty-one (Exp. 1) and 24 (Exp. 2) students participated and they were instructed to categorize pictures as rapidly as they could, ignoring word components. In Exp. 1, there were no significant interference or facilitation effects at all SOAs for both tasks. In Exp. 2, significant interference or facilitation effects were shown around 0 ms of SOA for both tasks. These results were discussed in relation to the effect of task demand on picture processing, to the locus of interference and to the difference in interference pattern between cross-modal and unimodal tasks.

主題