Words can interfere with perception at their associated locations: the role of orthography in spatial interference
Elisa Scerrati; Zachary Estes · 2025 · Language and Cognition
WASTE classifies this as Negative / Null Result Report · AI classification, approximate
The study found no significant effect — useful as a negative control or null benchmark for your own design.
The finding, in one line
“English, although it has failed to replicate several times in Italian.”
Abstract
The spatial interference effect, whereby words with implicit spatial associations (e.g., ‘bird’) hinder identification of unrelated visual targets (e.g., a square) at the associated locations (i.e., at the top of a display), has been demonstrated many times in English, although it has failed to replicate several times in Italian. The current study tested whether the replication failures in Italian may be due to insufficient semantic processing of the words. Indeed, while languages with highly inconsistent pronunciations, such as English, are more likely to involve semantic processing during wo
Abstract by Elisa Scerrati; Zachary Estes, Language and Cognition (2025) — licensed CC BY 4.0.
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Metadata source: DOAJ · DOI 10.1017/langcog.2025.10031