Authors:

PULVERMULLER, F. & MOHR, B.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2002

CBU number:

5073

Abstract:

Seven experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) on the processing of redundant information about words and phonologically and orthographically regular pseudowords. All stimuli were visually presented once or twice with two copies of the same item flashed either simultaneously or with short SOAs between presentations. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that word processing, but not processing of pseudowords, is facilitated by simultaneous redundant presentation. In Experiments 3, 4 and 5, the redundancy gain disappeared at an SOA of 50 ms with further deterioration of performance at longer SOAs. However, Experiment 6 and 7 probing SOAs of 150 and 300 ms revealed that, compared to presentation of one target stimulus alone, words were processed significantly faster when target and redundant copy appeared with a 150 ms lag. We call this word-specific redundancy effect ignition gain. The word-specific redundant target effect observed with simultaneous stimulus presentation and at 150 ms SOA, and the otherwise gradual performance decline with increasing SOA for both words and pseudowords are tentatively explained in a neurocognitive framework.