To what extent do we process the nondominant object in a morphed figure? Evidence from a picture-word interference task

To investigate to what extent response candidates are processed during visual object categorisation, two picture–word interference tasks were conducted in which the effects of different types of distractor words on object naming were examined. Distractor words were related to the dominant or the nondominant object in a morphed figure. We assume both the dominant and nondominant object to be response candidates during response competition. The distractor words were identical (dog-dog), semantically related (cow-dog), or unrelated (spoon-dog) to the dominant or nondominant object. It was found that in relation to the dominant object in a morphed figure identical distractors facilitated naming, whereas semantically related distractors caused interference indicating a general semantic interference effect. Moreover, in relation to the nondominant object identical words interfered with naming, whereas semantically related words only interfered with naming when they were response set members. Therefore, identical words in general influenced the activation of the nondominant response candidate, whereas semantically related words only did so under restricted conditions. The latter will be discussed in terms of short-term memory load. Overall, we conclude that the nondominant response candidate is processed up to the perceptual level.