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British Journal of Psychology (2015) © 2015 The British Psychological Society www.wileyonlinelibrary.com
Cognitive processing of currency: Euros and dollars Pedro Macizo* and Luis Morales Department of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Granada, Spain In the current study, we evaluated whether the processing of currency was determined by familiarity of people with banknotes. In Experiment 1, participants who used the Euro currency named sequences of Euro banknotes and Dollar banknotes blocked by category or mixed with exemplars of other categories. The participants showed an interference effect in the blocked context with Dollar banknotes but not with Euro banknotes. In Experiment 2, the interference effect was observed with Euro banknotes when participants were not familiar with the Euro currency. These results suggest that the semantic processing of banknotes depends on the participants’ familiarity with currency.
Currency is composed by coins and banknotes; coins usually representing a smaller monetary value than banknotes. In addition, there are several banknotes associated to different monetary values. For instance, the Euro (€) is the currency of majority of the countries in the European Union (e.g., Spain) and there are banknotes with distinctive size and colour to represent 5€, 10€, 20€, 50€, 100€, 200€, and 500€. Similarly, the US Dollar ($) is the official currency of the United States and Dollar banknotes with a distinctive design are also found for several monetary values ($1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100). Although banknotes are used in multitude of practical situations, cognitive processes underlying the use of currency is scarce. Macizo and Herrera (2013) focused on the production of the monetary value of Euro banknotes. Specifically, the authors asked whether the processing of banknotes required the accessing to semantic information. To this end, they adopted the blocking paradigm (Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Levelt, 1992) to evaluate the semantic processing of two dimensions that define banknotes: the processing of pictures (Glaser, 1992) and the processing of numbers (Herrera & Macizo, 2011, 2012; Roelofs, 2006). In this paradigm, participants name sequences of pictures in two situations: mixed and blocked. In the mixed condition, the sequence is randomly sampled from different categories (e.g., cow, lamp, eye, etc.) while in the blocked condition the pictures are grouped by category (e.g., cow, dog, pig, etc.). The usual finding is that naming latencies to pictures are slower in the blocked condition relative to the mixed condition (Damian et al., 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994). If we consider that lexical access in language production involves the accessing to the lemma level (semantic and syntactic properties) and to the word form (phonological information) (Levelt, 1992), the interference observed in the blocking paradigm is interpreted usually as a competitive process at the lemma level although its origin is semantic. In the blocked condition, the repeated access to concepts within the same
*Correspondence should be addressed to Pedro Macizo, Departamento de Psicologıa Experimental, Facultad de Psicologıa, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Cartuja, s/n. 18071, Granada, Spain (email:
[email protected]). DOI:10.1111/bjop.12114
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category produces competition among the co-activated lemmas and thus, the time needed to select the correct lemma increases (Damian et al., 2001). However, when Arabic digits are included as a further category (Herrera & Macizo, 2011, 2012), participants name them faster in the blocked condition than in the mixed condition. The absence of interference is interpreted as evidence that digits can be produced without semantic mediation. Moreover, the faster responses in the blocked condition suggest that phonological forms of digits are strongly associated at the lexical level, which facilitates the naming task (Herrera & Macizo, 2011). Macizo and Herrera (2013) asked participants to name sequences of Euro banknotes (blocked condition) or to name them intermixed with exemplars of semantic categories (mixed condition). The interference effect with the blocked paradigm was considered an index of the access to the monetary value of Euro banknotes. The authors did not observe interference due to the context in which Euro banknotes were produced which suggested that people did not retrieve the meaning of banknotes when they produced their monetary value. It might be possible that the absence of semantic processing of Euro banknotes in Macizo and Herrera’s (2013) study was mediated by the familiarity of participants with this currency. In fact, the participants in that study were individuals that used Euros in everyday life. As a consequence, the continuous practice in naming Euros might have promoted the automatic activation of phonology after the visual processing of banknotes. Hence, it might be possible that the continuous dealing with Euros would reduce the semantic processing of banknotes. This hypothesis is suggested by previous developmental findings in language production: Semantic competition sharply peak at the point children acquire new concepts and this interference dramatically fells when children are familiar and have practiced the naming of these new concepts (Dapretto & Bjork, 2000; Gershkoff-Stowe, 2001, 2002; Gershkoff-Stowe & Smith, 1997). Moreover, Gershkoff-Stowe (2002), observed that semantic errors during the production of unfamiliar pictures reduced when children were trained with the retrieval of their names relative to a condition with low practice pictures. The goal of the current study was to examine whether the semantic processing of banknotes depended on the familiarity of participants with a specific currency. We hypothesized that individuals would process banknotes of an unpracticed currency semantically. In contrast, individuals that frequently used a type of banknotes would use a direct connection between perceiving the banknotes and the retrieval of their names.
EXPERIMENT 1 In Experiment 1, we evaluated whether the processing of banknotes was affected by familiarity. To this end, Spanish participants that used the Euro currency in everyday contexts were required to name sequences of banknotes (blocked condition) or they named them intermixed with exemplars of semantic categories (mixed condition). The interference effect due to the context (mixed vs. blocked) was considered an index of the access to the monetary value of banknotes. A group of participants received Euro banknotes while a group of participants was presented with Dollars. If familiarity modulates the semantic processing of banknotes, we predicted that participants would retrieve the meaning of Dollar banknotes since they did not have previous experience with the Dollar currency. Hence, they might name Dollars more slowly in the blocked
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condition relative to the mixed condition. On the contrary, people would name Euro banknotes without accessing to meaning, since they were familiar with the Euro currency. Therefore, no interference effect might be observed with Euros.
Method Participants Sixty students from the University of Granada (51 women and nine men) participated in the experiment. All participants were born in Spain, they used Euro banknotes on a daily basis and they did not have experience with US Dollar banknotes (i.e., none of them visited USA before performing the current experiment). The participants reported neither history of language nor numerical disabilities, and all had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. Their mean age was 22.88 years (SD = 5.00). The participants were randomly assigned to the Euro banknotes condition (30 participants) and to the Dollar banknotes condition (30 participants).
Stimulus materials and apparatus The stimuli were composed of exemplars from four semantic categories (vehicle, furniture, animal, and body-part), Euro banknotes (5€, 10€, 20€, 50€, and 100€) and US Dollar banknotes ($5, $10, $20, $50, and $100). The exemplars of semantic categories were coloured pictures taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). The Euro banknotes were scanned and presented with the side of the banknote on which the picture of a window or a gateway was imprinted facing upward. The Dollar banknotes were also scanned and presented with the side of the banknotes with the portrait of US presidents. To avoid that participants focused on the numbers imprinted on the banknotes, all numbers were eliminated and replaced by a continuation of the picture imprinted on each banknote (Macizo & Herrera, 2013, Experiment 2). The lexical frequency per one-million count (Cuetos, Gonzalez-Nosti, Barb on, & Brysbaert, 2011) of the pictures names and number names denoting the value of banknotes was similar (70 and 102, respectively), t(23) = 1.00, p > .05. Half of the participants received the semantic categories and the Euro banknotes while the rest of participants were presented with the semantic categories and the Dollar banknotes. In these two conditions, the stimuli were arranged in a matrix of 5 9 5 items (Damian et al., 2001; Macizo & Herrera, 2013; see Figure 1). The rows corresponded to categories and formed the blocked category stimulus sets. The columns formed the mixed stimulus sets. We created 10 lists of stimuli. We used the items in the rows for five of the lists (blocked category lists), and the items in the columns for the other five lists (mixed category lists). The five items were repeated five times in a pseudorandom order within each list so that each item was sampled once before any item was repeated in the list, and the same item never appeared twice in succession. The experiment was controlled by a Genuine-Intel compatible PC 1.73 GHz, using E-prime experimental software, 1.1 version (Schneider, Eschman, & Zuccolotto, 2002). Instructions and stimuli were presented on a 17″ screen located at approximately 60 cm in front of the participant. Response latencies were collected using a microphone ATR 20 with low impedance connected to a PST serial Response Box (Schneider, 1995) and tape-recoded to eliminate trials with errors in the latency analyses.
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Figure 1. Matrix of 5 9 5 stimuli used to create semantic blocked lists (rows) and semantic mixed lists (columns) in the study.
Design and procedure The category (semantic vs. banknotes) and the context (mixed vs. blocked) were manipulated as within-subject variables. The type of banknotes (Euro vs. Dollar) was manipulated as a between-subject factor. All the participants performed four experimental blocks (two blocked and two mixed) that were presented in ABBA design. Half of participants started with the blocked category and the other half with the mixed category. Within each blocked category block, the five blocked category lists (see above) were randomly presented. Within each mixed block, the five mixed category lists were randomly presented. Each block consisted of 125 trials; therefore, there were a total of 500 experimental trials. On each trial, a fixation cross was presented for 500 ms. After a blank period of 500 ms, the target item (picture or banknote) was shown for 500 ms. Latencies were measured from the onset of the target until the subject’s response or until 1000 ms. The next trial started after 1000 ms. There was a short break between lists and between blocks. Before the experimental trials, the participants were presented with a set of cards. Each card contained one of the pictures with its more common name in Spanish (Perez & Naval on, 2003) and the Euro banknotes and Dollar banknotes with their monetary values. Participants were told to examine the pictures carefully with their names and the banknotes with their monetary values because they would have to name them later. All the participants performed four practice trials before the experiment.
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Results and discussion Trials on which an incorrect response was provided were eliminated from the analysis (4.56% of the data). The accuracy in the naming task was 98.97% for the naming of semantic categories, 98.30% for the naming of Euros banknotes which were familiar to the participants and 85.50% for the naming of Dollar banknotes which were unfamiliar to the participants. In addition, trials with reaction times (RT) below or above 3 SD for an individual participant’s mean were excluded from the analyses (1.10% of the data in the Euro banknotes group and 1.09% of the data in the Dollar banknotes group). To check the semantic context effect in the usual way (Damian et al., 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), the mean RT of all semantic categories was computed for the groups that received Euro banknotes and for the group that received Dollar banknotes. Afterwards, we compared them with the mean RT of the Euro banknotes and the Dollar banknotes. Hence, we performed Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) by participants (F1) and items (F2) with the category (semantic vs. banknotes) as a within participants (between items) factor, the context (mixed vs. blocked) as a within participants (within items) factor, and the type of banknotes (Euros vs. Dollars) as a between participants (between items) factor. We correlated naming latencies and number of errors across the 8 (2 9 2 9 2) conditions of the experiment and we found a positive correlation, r = .71, p = .05. Thus, there was no evidence of speed-accuracy trade-off and errors were not separately analysed. Table 1 shows the mean naming latencies obtained in the different conditions of the experiment. The results showed a significant effect of the category, F1(1, 58) = 136.63, p < .001, gp2 = .70; F2(1, 46) = 97.32, p < .001, gp2 = .68. The participants were faster naming exemplars of semantic categories (M = 572 ms, SE = 9), relative to the naming of banknotes (M = 645 ms, SE = 10). The participants were slower when naming items in the blocked context (M = 623 ms, SE = 10) than in the mixed context (M = 594 ms, SE = 9), F1(1, 58) = 61.64, p < .001, gp2 = .52; F2(1, 46) = 101.00, p < .001, gp2 = .69. The main effect of type of banknotes was not significant by participants, F1(1, 58) = 2.47, p > .05, gp2 = .04, but it was by items, F2(1, 46) = 13.35, p < .001, gp2 = .22. All two-ways interactions were significant (all ps < .001). However, more important was the significant three-way interaction among the Category (semantic vs. banknotes) 9 Context (mixed vs. blocked) 9 Type of banknotes (Euro vs. Dollars), F1(1, 58) = 47.59, p < .001, gp2 = .45; F2(1, 46) = 53.92, p < .001, gp2 = .54. The interaction showed that the context effect varied among the semantic category, the Euro banknotes and the Dollar banknotes. Table 1. Mean naming latencies (in milliseconds) obtained in Experiment 1 for semantic categories and banknotes as a function of the type of banknote condition (Euros and Dollars) and the context (mixed vs. blocked). Standard errors are reported in brackets. CE: Context effects (difference between naming latencies in the mixed condition relative to the blocked condition)
Euro banknotes condition Mixed context Blocked context CE Dollar banknotes condition Mixed context Blocked context CE
Semantic categories
Banknotes
566 (12) 576 (14) 10
614 (14) 620 (15) 6
566 (12) 580 (14) 14
631 (14) 715 (15) 84
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Semantic categories When participants named exemplars of semantic categories, they were slower in the blocked context (M = 578 ms, SE = 10) relative to the mixed context (M = 566 ms, SE = 9), F1(1, 58) = 13.21, p < .001, gp2 = .18; F2(1, 38) = 23.30, p < .001, gp2 = .38. However, there were no differences between the naming of exemplars of semantic categories in the Euro banknotes condition and the Dollar banknotes condition, F1 and F2 < 1. Finally, the effect of the context was similar when participants named exemplars of semantic categories in the Euro banknotes condition and the Dollar banknotes condition, F1 and F2 < 1.
Banknotes In the case of banknotes, the Context 9 Type of banknotes interaction was significant, F1(1, 58) = 51.00, p < .001, gp2 = .47; F2(1, 8) = 36.69, p < .001, gp2 = .82. The naming of Euro banknotes was similar in the blocked context (M = 620 ms, SE = 15) and the mixed context (M = 614 ms, SE = 14), F1 and F2 < 1. However, when participants named Dollar banknotes, they were slower in the blocked context (M = 715 ms, SE = 15) relative to the mixed context (M = 631 ms, SE = 14), F1(1, 58) = 118.85, p < .001, gp2 = .67; F2(1, 8) = 84.64, p < .001, gp2 = .91 (see Figure 2). As shown in Figure 2, the context effect found with Dollar banknotes seemed to be larger relative to that obtained with semantic categories. In fact, there were differences in the magnitude of the interference effect between semantic categories and Dollar banknotes, F1(1, 29) = 54.84, p < .001, gp2 = .65; F2(1, 23) = 92.60, p < .001, gp2 = .80, so the interference context effect was larger when participants named Dollar banknotes relative to the naming of exemplars of semantic categories. In Experiment 1, we questioned whether the semantic processing of banknotes would be modulated by the exposure and practice of individuals with a specific currency. The answer to this question seems to be affirmative. First, we replicated the absence of
Figure 2. The figure depicts effect sizes (gp2) using participants as the random factor for the context effects (mixed condition vs. blocked context) obtained in Experiment 1 with participants of Euro currency and Experiment 2 with participants of Dollar currency.
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semantic interference when users of the Euro currency named Euro banknotes (Macizo & Herrera, 2013). However, this interference effect showed up when participants named banknotes with which they did not have experience: Dollar banknotes. Therefore, this pattern of results seems to suggest that when individuals encountered unfamiliar banknotes they processed them semantically. On the contrary, a direct route from perceiving banknotes to retrieving their names was used when individuals were familiar with banknotes in everyday life. However, there is an alternative explanation for the presence of semantic interference with Dollars and its absence with Euros. There are more distinctive features to differentiate among Euro banknotes than among Dollar banknotes. For instance, while the size of all Dollar banknotes is the same, each Euro banknotes has a specific size, which correlates with their monetary value (see Figure 1). In other words, individuals would be less easily able to discriminate among Dollars than among Euros. This larger difficulty to discriminate Dollars might produce more visual confusability in the blocked context of Dollar banknotes relative to blocked context of Euro banknotes. Hence, the locus of the interference effect with Dollars would be located at the visual stage of processing (although see Damian et al., 2001; for evidence of interference effects with the blocking paradigm even after controlling for visual confusability). The close similarity of Dollar banknotes would have consequences at the semantic level of processing as well. There is previous evidence that the ease to discriminate among exemplars of the same category determines the presence of competition and semantic interference in picture naming (Humphreys, Lloyd-Jones, & Fias, 1995). Humphreys et al. (1995) observed semantic interference when participants named a target picture that was difficult to discriminate from an overlapped distractor picture. However, when target and distractors were easy to dissociate by using a cue after the stimulus presentation, the semantic interference effect disappeared. Hence, that study supported the claim that for semantic interference to arise, exemplars of a semantic category have to be difficult to discriminate. To sum up, the facility to discriminate banknotes might explain the differential effects obtained for Euros banknotes and Dollar banknotes. However, before assuming this explanation, a previous step was to corroborate that Euro banknotes were, in fact, easy to discriminate than Dollar banknotes. To evaluate this premise we performed an additional study in which 42 new participants were presented with pairs of banknotes and they were instructed to rate the difficulty to discriminate them from 0 (very easy) to 7 (very difficult). All possible combinations of banknotes used in the Experiment 1 were randomly presented within each currency, Euros pairs (5€–10€, 5€–50€, 10€–100€, 10€–20€, 20€– 100€, 20€–5€, 50€–10€, 50€–20€, 100€–5€, 100€–50€) and Dollars pairs (same combinations). Overall, banknotes were very easy to discriminate (M = 1.40, SD = 1.20). However, Dollars banknotes were more difficult to discriminate (M = 1.71, SD = 1.30), than Euro banknotes (M = 1.09, SD = 1.00), t(82) = 2.44, p < .01. Therefore, the easy to discriminate Euro banknotes might determine the absence of interference effect found in Experiment 1. The next experiment was aimed to directly evaluate this hypothesis.
EXPERIMENT 2 In Experiment 1, we observed that Spanish participants with the Euro currency and without experience with US Dollars did not show semantic interference when naming Euros but it was present when they named Dollar banknotes. These results seem to suggest that the semantic processing of banknotes depends on the familiarity of
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participants with them. However, to allow for this conclusion, another potential explanation needs to be excluded. The absence of interference effect with Euros might be due to the easy to discriminate among Euro banknotes relative to Dollar banknotes. The Experiment 2 was aimed to dissociate between these two accounts. To this end, US participants without previous experience with the Euro currency were required to name Euro banknotes presented in the blocked context or in the mixed context. The familiarity account and the discriminability account would make prediction directly opposed. From the discriminability account, the same pattern of results obtained in Experiment 1 with Euro banknotes would be found in Experiment 2. Hence, the semantic interference effect with Euro banknotes would not be observed due to the ease to discriminate among them. On the contrary, the familiarity account would predict an interference effect with Euro banknotes when participants without experience with the Euro currency named them. In other words, US participants of Experiment 2 would process Euros like Spanish participants processed Dollars in Experiment 1 since in both cases participants were unfamiliar with these banknotes.
Method Participants Fourteen students from the Pennsylvania State University participated in the experiment (eight women and six men). All participants were born in United States, they used Dollar banknotes on a daily basis and they did not have experience with Euro banknotes (i.e., none of them visited European countries with Euro currency before performing the current experiment). The participants reported neither history of language nor numerical disabilities, and all had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. Their mean age was 19.43 years (SD = 2.90).
Stimulus materials and apparatus The same semantic categories and Euro banknotes selected in Experiment 1 were used in this experiment. All details were the same as those described in Experiment 1.
Design and procedure The category (semantic vs. Euro banknotes) and the context (mixed vs. blocked) were manipulated as within-subject variables. We used the same procedure as described in Experiment 1.
Results and Discussion Trials on which an incorrect response was provided were eliminated from the analysis (4.90% of the data). The accuracy in naming semantic categories was 97.85% while the accuracy in naming Euros banknotes which were unfamiliar to the participants was 94.78%. In addition, trials with reaction times (RT) below or above 3 SD for an individual participant’s mean were excluded from the analyses (0.66% of the data). ANOVAs were performed by participants (F1) and items (F2) with the category (semantic vs. Euro banknotes) as a within participants (between items) factor and the context (mixed vs. blocked) as a within participants (within items) factor. Mean naming latencies obtained in
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Table 2. Mean naming latencies (in milliseconds) obtained in Experiment 2 for semantic categories and Euro banknotes as a function of the context (mixed vs. blocked). Standard errors are reported in brackets. CE: Context effects (difference between naming latencies in the mixed condition relative to the blocked condition)
Mixed context Blocked context CE
Semantic categories
Euro banknotes
641 (18) 657 (18) 16
701 (18) 762 (21) 61
the different conditions of the experiment are reported in Table 2. There was a positive correlation (r = .99, p = .002) between naming latencies and number of errors across the 4 (2 9 2) conditions of the experiment. Thus, there was no evidence of speed-accuracy trade-off and errors were not separately analysed. The ANOVA performed with category (semantic vs. Euro banknotes) and context (mixed vs. blocked), showed that participants were slower when they named Euro banknotes (M = 732 ms, SE = 18) than when they named exemplars of semantic categories (M = 649 ms, SE = 18), F1(1, 13) = 121.89, p < .001, gp2 = .90; F2(1, 23) = 43.60, p < .001, gp2 = .65. In addition, they were slower in the blocked context (M = 710 ms, SE = 19) relative to the mixed context (M = 671 ms, SE = 18), F1(1, 13) = 18.62, p < .001, gp2 = .59; F2(1, 23) = 20.99, p < .001, gp2 = .48. Moreover, the Category 9 Context interaction was significant, F1(1, 13) = 15.39, p < .001, gp2 = .54; F2(1, 23) = 4.44, p < .05, gp2 = .16. The interaction indicated that the magnitude of the context effect depended on the category. When participants named exemplars from semantic categories, they were 16 ms slower in the blocked context (M = 657 ms, SE = 18) as compared to the mixed context (M = 641 ms, SE = 18), F1(1, 13) = 5.06, p < .05, gp2 = .28; F2(1, 23) = 7.66, p < .01, gp2 = .25. When participants named Euro banknotes, there was 61 ms difference between the naming in the blocked context (M = 762 ms, SE = 21) and the naming in the mixed context (M = 701 ms, SE = 18), F1(1, 13) = 21.34, p < .001, gp2 = .62; F2(1, 23) = 13.98, p < .001, gp2 = .38 (see Figure 2). The results obtained in Experiment 2 showed an interference effect when participants named sequences of Euro banknotes relative to the naming of Euro banknotes in a mixed context. This effect contrasts with the absence of interference in Experiment 1 with Euro banknotes. This pattern of results is difficult to accommodate within the discriminability hypothesis. In both experiments, the same Euro banknotes were used. Hence, the facility to discriminate the stimuli was identical and the same pattern of results would be expected in Experiments 1 and 2. The main difference between experiments was the familiarity of participants with the Euro currency. The participants in Experiment 1 used Euro banknotes in everyday life while the participants of Experiment 2 did not have previous experience with this currency. Therefore, the presence of interference in Experiment 2 and its absence in Experiment 1 seems to be associated with the familiarity of participants with banknotes of a specific currency.
GENERAL DISCUSSION In this study, we explored whether semantic processing is required when people say aloud the monetary value of banknotes. Previous work (Macizo & Herrera, 2013)
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demonstrated that Euro banknotes can be named without semantic mediation by a direct lexical route similar to that used to name words (Damian et al., 2001; Glaser, 1992) and digits (Herrera & Macizo, 2011, 2012). The current study shows again that Euro banknotes can be named bypassing the semantic system. However, more important was the observation that banknotes can be processed semantically under some circumstances. The way in which banknotes are processed seems to depend on the familiarity of participants with a specific currency. In Experiments 1 and 2, the interference effect due to the context in which the items to be named were presented was considered an index of semantic processing. In both experiments, participants were slower to name exemplars of semantic categories in the blocked condition relative to the mixed condition. It is assumed that this interference is a cumulative effect that originates at the semantic level (e.g., Damian et al., 2001). For instance, when the picture of a dog has to be named in a blocked context, its semantic representation becomes active and passes some activation on to other members of the category including other animals named on preceding trials. These co-activated representations will compete during the retrieval of the target name at the lexical level. Therefore, the target lexical representation will be temporary less accessible and will produce a delay of the naming process. With regard to the processing of banknotes, in Experiment 1 we confronted the processing of Euro banknotes and Dollar banknotes in Euro users. The participants only presented semantic interference with Dollars but not with Euros. The differences between these two categories of banknotes might be explained in terms of the ease to discriminate among Euro banknotes relative to the discrimination among Dollar banknotes. In fact, participants rated to more difficult the discriminability of pairs of Dollar banknotes than that of pairs of Euro banknotes. The large difficulty to discriminate among items might foster the semantic processing in the case of Dollar banknotes. For example, in a seminal study, Sperber, McCauley, Ragain, and Weil (1979), observed that semantic priming effects in naming tasks were greater for picture-picture pairs than for other prime-target combinations (picture-word, word-word and word-picture pairs). The authors proposed that the degree of semantic priming in picture naming task was modulated by the visual similarity of items from the same semantic category: The greater the visual similarity among members of a semantic category, the larger the semantic priming effect. However, the discriminability hypothesis cannot account for the different pattern of results obtained with Euro banknotes in Experiment 1 and 2. The same Euro banknotes were used in both experiments and thus, any difference between experiments cannot be attributed to differences in the intrinsic properties of the stimuli. The main difference between Experiments 1 and 2 was the experience that participants had with the Euro currency. Spanish participants, a country with the Euro currency, participated in Experiment 1, while US participants without previous exposure to Euro banknotes participated in Experiment 2. Hence, familiarity with a currency seems to determine the semantic processing of banknotes. In fact, the interference effect obtained in the blocked context was larger for unfamiliar banknotes relative to the effect found with familiar stimuli1 (exemplars of semantic categories). In Experiment 1 the interference effect was larger when Euro users processed unfamiliar banknotes (Dollars)
1 We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting these analyses and the theoretical implications of possible differences in the magnitude of the context effect between semantic categories and Dollar banknotes.
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relative to the naming of items from semantic categories. Similarly, in Experiment 2 the interference effect was larger when Dollar users processed unfamiliar banknotes (Euros) relative to semantic exemplars. Moreover, the interference effect for the same banknotes (Euros) was absent when they were familiar to the participants (Euro users, Experiment 1) and it was present when the same banknotes were unfamiliar to Dollar users (Experiment 2). Together, this pattern or results seems to indicate that regardless of the specific type of banknotes (Dollars or Euros), unfamiliar banknotes (Dollars for Euro users, Euros for Dollar users) promote interference. The proposal that semantic interference with banknotes depends on the familiarity of participants with a specific currency receives support from previous studies on language production (Burt, 2002; Dhooge & Hartsuiker, 2010; La Heij, Mark, Sander, & Willeboordse, 1998; Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003). For instance, Miozzo and Caramazza observed that low-familiar distractors semantically related with pictures interfered more than high-familiar distractors did in a picture naming task. The discussion about the influence that familiarity might have when individuals perform a picture naming task is embedded within a wider discussion of whether the processing of visual stimuli (pictures, objects, faces, etc.) requires pivotal semantic mediation to be named.2 The majority of researchers hold that the road from visual perception to articulation needs necessarily the access to semantic information regardless of the familiarity of the stimuli (Glaser, 1992). Hence, while words can be read by a direct lexical route, the naming of visual items always requires semantic processing (Damian et al., 2001). However, there are researchers assuming that this direct lexical route is also possible for the naming of objects (Kremin, 1986, 1988; Ratcliff & Newcombe, 1982). Ratcliff and Newcombe propose a serial model with an early visual processing stage in which three-dimensional properties of the object are described. The authors argue that from this early description of the visual stimuli, individuals are able to retrieve the name of the stimuli bypassing access to the semantic system. There is empirical evidence to support this direct lexical route when participants name visual stimuli (Funnell, Huehes, & Woodcock, 2006; Kremin, 1986, 1988; Werker, Cohen, Lloyd, Casasola, & Stager, 1998; Woodward & Hoyne, 1999). For instance, specific clinical populations are able to form associations between objects and names without understanding the meaning of the objects themselves (i.e., patients with dementia of Alzheimer’s type, patients with non-optic aphasia; Shuren, Geldmacher, & Heilman, 1993; Visch-Brink, Hagelstein, Middelkoop, & van der Cammen, 2004). To illustrate, Visch-Brink et al. reported the case of a patient with Alzheimer disease who showed a picture naming performance within the normal range but an impaired score in a semantic association task. Importantly, the use of a lexical route without semantic mediation seems to be associated with the processing of familiar stimuli such as the naming of familiar objects (Funnell et al., 2006; Kremin, Beauchamp & Perrier, 1994) and the naming of familiar faces (Brennen, 1999; Brennen, David, Fluchaire, & Pellat, 1996; Papagno & Muggia, 1999). Funnell et al. (2006) compared the naming and knowing of stimuli in children between 3 and 11 years. The authors observed that items acquired before the age of 80 months showed an advantage for naming while there was an advantage for knowing in the case of items whose names were acquired above this age. The authors concluded that
2 We are greatly indebted to Marc Brysbaert for suggesting this stimulating discussion about whether familiarity of visual stimuli might modulate semantic processing of items in language production.
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the ability to name an item which was acquired early in childhood did not rely on the access to conceptual knowledge but it depended on perceptual properties of the item. The idea of a direct lexical route for visual stimuli modulated by familiarity might account for the results obtained in the current study with banknotes. When participants processed familiar banknotes, the perceptual processing of stimuli (colour, size and pictures of banknotes) might dominate which would allow items to be named even without semantic processing. However, the processing of unfamiliar banknotes would be associated with the retrieval of semantic knowledge of the stimuli which would produce the interference effect obtained in our study. To sum up, this study suggests that there is not a fixed mechanism to name banknotes. Also, this mechanism seems to be not fixed for a specific category of banknotes, since different effects can be obtained with Euro banknotes depending on the participants’ familiarity with this currency. Hence, the processes used to produce the monetary value of banknotes seem to be related with the use of money.
Acknowledgements This study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (research project PSI2012-32287). We thank Giuli Dussias for hosting the Experiment 2 with English speakers in her laboratory at the University of Penn State (USA).
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