School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Memory. 2012;20(8):882-90. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2012.706308. Epub 2012 Aug 17.
When asked how many animals of each kind Moses took on the Ark, most people respond with "two" despite the substituted name (Moses for Noah) in the question. Possible explanations for semantic illusions appear to be related to processing limitations such as those of working memory. Indeed, individual working memory capacity has an impact upon how sentences containing substitutions are processed. This experiment examined further the role of working memory in the occurrence of semantic illusions using a dual-task working memory load approach. Participants verified statements while engaging in either articulatory suppression or random number generation. Secondary task type had a significant effect on semantic illusion rate, but only when comparing the control condition to the two dual-task conditions. Furthermore, secondary task performance in the random number generation condition declined, suggesting a tradeoff between tasks. Response time analyses also showed a different pattern of processing across the conditions. The findings suggest that the phonological loop plays a role in representing semantic illusion sentences coherently and in monitoring for details, while the role of the central executive is to assist gist-processing of sentences. This usually efficient strategy leads to error in the case of semantic illusions.
当被问及摩西在方舟上带了多少种动物时，大多数人回答“两种”，尽管问题中的名字被替换了（摩西变成了诺亚）。语义错觉的可能解释似乎与处理限制有关，例如工作记忆。事实上，个体的工作记忆容量会影响包含替代词的句子的处理方式。本实验进一步使用双任务工作记忆负荷方法研究了工作记忆在语义错觉发生中的作用。参与者在进行发音抑制或随机数字生成时验证陈述。次要任务类型对语义错觉率有显著影响，但仅在将对照条件与两个双任务条件进行比较时才如此。此外，在随机数字生成条件下的次要任务表现下降，表明任务之间存在权衡。反应时间分析也显示了不同条件下的不同处理模式。研究结果表明，语音回路在连贯地表示语义错觉句子和监控细节方面发挥作用，而中央执行器的作用是帮助句子的要点处理。这种通常有效的策略在语义错觉的情况下会导致错误。
