There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Repetition has often been associated with a reduction or a suppression of semantic
effects. However, several studies have reported that semantic processing can still
be effective for repeated target stimuli when the context, prime word or sentence
frame, changes from trial to trial. This type of context-target designs allows to
study semantic associations between repeated words. However, it is not optimal to
study single concepts or categories and therefore structural aspects of semantic memory.
Here, we tested whether semantic effects could be observed if single-word trials were
used. Concrete and Abstract words were presented multiple times in two concrete-abstract
classification experiments. In the first experiment, 6 words of each category were
repeatedly presented. In the second experiment, only one word of each category was
used. Results of both experiments showed significant effects of concreteness on reaction
times and N400-like event-related potentials (ERPs), which were comparable to those
reported in non-repeated conditions. In the second experiment, in which repetitions
occurring in consecutive and non-consecutive trials were contrasted, N400-like effects
were observed only for non-consecutive repetitions. These findings suggest that it
could be possible to study the brain activity corresponding to individual concepts
in experimental designs using single-word trials, provided that consecutive repetitions
are avoided.
Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.