THE SEMANTIC SIMON EFFECT

Three experiments are reported in which a semantic variant of the Simo n paradigm was used. In Experiment 1, participants saw Dutch and Engli sh words that corresponded to names of animals (e.g. DOG) or occupatio ns (e.g. TEACHER). Participants were instructed to respond by saying A NIMAL or OCCUPATION, depending on whether the presented word was a Dut ch or English word (i.e. relevant stimulus feature) but irrespective o f whether the word was the name of an animal or an occupation (i.e. ir relevant stimulus feature). Results showed that responses were facilit ated when the correct response corresponded to the name of the semanti c category of the presented word (e.g. saying ''ANIMAL'' to DOG) compa red to when it was the name of a different semantic category (e.g. say ing ''occupation'' to Dec), even though the semantic category of the p resented word was irrelevant and had to be ignored. Category membershi p also influenced response times when letter case (upper- or lower-cas e: Experiment 2) and grammatical category (noun or adjective: Experime nt 3) had to be determined in order to select a category label as a re sponse. The semantic Simon effect offers a new tool that can be used t o study automatic semantic processing.