Cumulative Semantic Interference in People with Aphasia
Summary
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a well-studied interference effect, Cumulative Semantic Interference, occurs in a group of People with Aphasia, and to see whether it requires correct picture-naming or just exposure to a picture.
Method: 25 people with Aphasia, all with some degree of word-finding difficulty, participated in a continuous naming task. Two sessions were performed by each participant; each session contained a total of 150 items from 5 semantic categories.
Results: Following Linear Mixed Effects Modelling, the results did not generate the anticipated interference phenomenon for these participants, and a post-hoc reanalysis with narrower semantic categories also found no effect.
Conclusion: The second hypothesis was expected to argue in favour of one of the three computational models of the effect. A range of possible explanations for this negative finding are offered, and potential adaptations to answer this question are offered.