Effects of irrelevant speech on semantic and phonological judgments of Chinese characters

Figures & data

Table 1. Example trials used in the two tasks.

Task	Trial type	Example	Meaning	Pinyin^2	Correct response
Semantic judgment	Experimental	沸—歧	Boiling-different	fei4-qi2	NO
	Filler	频—屡	Frequent-frequent	pin2-lü3	YES
Phonological judgment	Experimental	沸—歧	Boiling-different	fei4-qi2	NO
	Filler	频—痞	Frequent-ruffian	pin2-pi3	YES

Table 2. Properties of the second characters of the filler trials under two tasks.

Task	Example	Number of strokes		Single-character word frequency (per million)		Character frequency (per million)
		M	SE	M	SE	M	SE
Semantic judgment	屡	9.91	0.28	26.40	4.73	111.79	16.05
Phonological judgment	痞	9.75	0.26	23.02	3.66	103.46	15.95

Figure 1. Mean reaction times for the different background sound conditions, broken down by task. Error bars represent the standard error of the means. MFS = meaningful speech; MLS = meaningless speech; SRS = spectrally-rotated speech.

Table 3. Mean error rates (%), broken down by task and sound condition for the experimental trials.

Task	MFS	MLS	SRS	Silence
Semantic judgment	1.5 (0.3)	2.3 (0.3)	1.6 (0.3)	1.7 (0.3)
Phonological judgment	2.1 (0.3)	2.5 (0.4)	2.6 (0.4)	3.0 (0.4)

Note: The standard errors are shown in parentheses.

Table 4. Output from the linear-mixed effects models for reaction time for the experimental trials. Significant effects are marked in bold.

Effect	b	SE	t	d
Intercept (grand mean)	7.17	0.03	247.2	/
Task (semantic judgment vs. phonological judgment)	−0.52	0.06	−9.00	−1.19
Sound (MFS vs. MLS)	0.07	0.01	11.14	0.12
Sound (MLS vs. SRS)	0.07	0.01	10.80	0.17
Sound (SRS vs. silence)	−0.04	0.01	−0.68	/
Sound (MFS vs. silence)	0.13	0.01	21.25	0.29
Task × Sound (MFS vs. MLS)	0.14	0.01	10.86	/
Task × Sound (MLS vs. SRS)	−0.11	0.01	−8.78	/
Task × Sound (SRS vs. silence)	0.01	0.01	0.68	/
Task × Sound (MFS vs. silence)	0.03	0.01	2.76	/

Table 5. Simple effect analysis of the interaction between Task and Sound for the experimental trials. Significant effects are marked in bold.

Effect	Semantic judgment				Phonological judgment
	b	SE	t	d	b	SE	t	d
Sound (MFS vs. MLS)	0.14	0.01	15.06	0.31	0.00	0.01	0.42	/
Sound (MLS vs. SRS)	0.01	0.01	1.40	/	0.12	0.01	14.89	0.32
Sound (MFS vs. silence)	0.15	0.01	16.46	0.36	0.12	0.01	14.18	0.35

Figure 2. Mean reaction times of filler trials for the different background sound conditions, broken down by task. Error bars show the standard error of the means. MFS = meaningful speech; MLS = meaningless speech; SRS = spectrally-rotated speech.

Table 6. Mean error rates (%) for filler trials (SEs in parentheses).

Task	MFS	MLS	SRS	Silence
Semantic judgment	9.1 (0.9)	10.9 (1.0)	9.9 (1.0)	9.1 (0.9)
Phonological judgment	7.1 (0.8)	7.6 (0.9)	7.4 (0.8)	7.0 (0.8)

Table 7. Output from the linear-mixed effects models for reaction times for filler trials. Significant effects are marked in bold.

Effect	b	SE	t	d
Intercept (grand mean)	7.05	0.03	271.4	/
Task (semantic judgment vs. phonological judgment)	−0.40	0.05	−8.15	0.94
Sound (MFS vs. MLS)	0.05	0.01	5.79	0.09
Sound (MLS vs. SRS)	0.05	0.01	5.33	0.14
Sound (SRS vs. silence)	0.01	0.01	0.70	/
Sound (MFS vs. silence)	0.10	0.01	11.87	0.25
Task × Sound (MFS vs. MLS)	0.10	0.02	5.96	/
Task × Sound (MLS vs. SRS)	−0.12	0.02	−7.07	/
Task × Sound (SRS vs. silence)	0.01	0.02	0.40	/
Task × Sound (MFS vs. silence)	−0.01	0.02	−0.73	/

Table 8. Simple effect analysis of the interaction between Task and Sound for filler trials. Significant effects are marked in bold.

Effect	Semantic judgment				Phonological judgment
	b	SE	t	d	b	SE	t	d
Sound (MFS vs. MLS)	0.10	0.01	8.09	0.26	−0.00	0.01	−0.04	/
Sound (MLS vs. SRS)	−0.01	0.01	−1.08	/	0.11	0.01	9.64	0.30

Data availability statement

The data files, R scripts, and stimuli used in the present research are openly available at: https://osf.io/j46mr/