On the origin of the cumulative semantic inhibition effect

Abstract

We report an extension of the cumulative semantic inhibition effect found by Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, and Cole-Virtue (2006). Using more sensitive statistical analyses, we found a significant variation in the magnitude of the effect across categories. This variation cannot be explained by the naming speed of each category. In addition, using a sub-sample of the data, a second cumulative effect arouse for newly-defined supra-categories, over and above the effect of the original ones. We discuss these findings in terms of the representations that drive lexical access, and interpret them as supporting featural or distributed hypotheses.