Early identification of taboo words reveals a prominent role of semantic information in visual word recognition
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This research used the progressive demasking paradigm to investigate whether perceptual word identification is facilitated by semantic information. Experiment 1 revealed faster identification for taboo than neutral words. Experiment 2 revealed faster identification for taboo than emotionally-comparable non-taboo words, whereas the difference with respect to neutral words was possibly mitigated by list-wise factors related to list composition. Moreover, the facilitation for taboo words was impervious to habituation. The taboo connotation advantage seemingly originates from the attentional capture triggered by tabooness, a socio-culturally determined semantic feature that, under appropriate contextual conditions, modulates perceptual word identification. Our results suggest that (a) semantic processing is a pervasive component of any task involving word processing, and (b) when semantic information does not hinder the main task, it may influence even the earliest stages of word perceptual identification.
Source: Cognition & Emotion
Authors: Simone Sulpizio, Michele Scaltritti
Institutions: University of Milano-Bicocca, University of Trento
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4409292324