The Effect of Semantic Relatedness and Typicality upon Visual Detection of a Target

In line with previous work by Treisman, many studies have demonstrated effects of perceptual discrimination between visual targets and distractors. Few studies however have investigated semantic discrimination effects. We report the findings of two experiments that were carried out in order to demonstrate the influence of semantic relatedness between a target word and distractor words in interaction with perceptual discrimination. The results demonstrate perceptual discrimination effects within a semantic task (e.g. from a group of words finding a word which means a type of fish), the role of degree of target typicality and, importantly, the effect of semantic relatedness between a target and its distractor context.