1. Sara C. Sereno Patrick J. O’Donnell Margaret E. Sereno
Size Matters
Sara C. Sereno
Patrick J. O’Donnell
Margaret E. Sereno

2. Bigger is better Large vs. small visual object
Activation of more neurons
Attract attention more easily
May hold attention for longer

3. Bigger is better Ethology Mate selection (e.g., alpha males)
Supernormal stimulus
(Tinbergen & Perdeck, 1950)

4. Bigger is better
Size-value effect (Bruner & Goodman, 1947) 50 20
>

5. Bigger is better Size-congruity effects ZEBRA Pavio (1975)
Rubinsten & Henik (2002) + +
ZEBRA
LAMP

6. Bigger is better
Line bisection with numbers (Fischer, 2001) 9 1 2 8

7. Bigger is better Linguistic markedness
Unmarked = usual, dominant, basic, default form
Marked = (not the above)
Examples:
Gender marking: general/male female
lion, actor lioness, actress
Size: How tall is X?
How big is y?
How wide is z?

8. Semantic Size Hypothesis
Words denoting “big” entities are easier to process than those denoting “small” entities.
RTs for semantically “big” words will be faster than those for semantically “small” words.

9. Lexical Decision Experiment
Subjects: N=28
14 female, 14 male
26 years old
right-handed
Apparatus
Mac G4 using PsyScope PPC software
24-pt Courier font (black on white)
3 characters = 1o visual angle

10. Lexical Decision Experiment
Materials
Big/Small defined in relation to human size
N Length Syl Freq Image Example
Big bookcase
Small teaspoon
Frequency BNC (occurrences per million)
Imageability MRC Psycholinguistic Database
(scale 1-7) Bristol Norms (Stadthagen-Gonzalez & Davis, 2006)
Cortese & Fugett’s (2004) Imageability Norms
90 length-matched pseudowords (e.g., blimble)

11. Materials BIG SMALL BIG SMALL BIG SMALL
bed cup truck thumb buffalo apricot
bay fly whale peach gorilla parsley
jet lip camel glove giraffe emerald
cow pin comet snail mountain magazine
park rose moose tulip motorway bacteria
tree neck planet button elephant molecule
bear ring jungle needle wardrobe sandwich
lake nose galaxy insect dinosaur parasite
tank tape rocket bullet downtown mosquito
bull leaf walrus peanut bookcase teaspoon
river glass monster diamond cathedral cigarette
train phone stadium battery submarine butterfly
horse video mansion vitamin skyscraper fingernail
ocean apple tractor sausage supermarket handkerchief
shore robin volcano aspirin hippopotamus hummingbird

12. Lexical Decision Experiment
Procedure
Instructed that words represent a selection of several different categories of objects.
NW W
Response mapping:
left right
1000 ms
200 ms +
500 ms
until response
string

13. Results Data exclusion Overall: RTs < 250 ms & RTs > 1500 ms
Per subj per cond: RTs < –2SD & RTs > +2SD
4.72% data loss

14. Results RT (ms) %Err Big words 513 (8.6) 1.6 (.3)
Small words (9.3) (.5)
t1(27)=5.22, p< ts<1.15, ps>.25
t2(44)=3.29, p<.01

15. Discussion Potential confound of response mapping: Spatial markedness
Right is for WORD response, Big or Small.
Spatially, however, Left is marked and Right is unmarked.
Consistency of markedness (Right, Big) confers benefit only to Big words.
SNARC (Dehaene et al., 1993)
Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes
Faster right-sided responses to larger numbers; faster left-sided responses to smaller numbers.
E.g., Which is bigger? vs. · ·

17. Discussion Test potential confound: W NW Reverse response mapping:
left right
Subjects: N=14 (7F,7M), 23 years old, R-handed
Materials: identical
Procedure: identical
Results: 5% data exclusion

18. Discussion Replication: RT (ms) %Err Combined data: RT (ms)
Big words
Small words
t1(13)=2.71, p< ts<1.05, ps>.30
t2(44)=2.08, p<.05
Combined data: RT (ms)
Big words
Small words
F1(1,40)=28.12, p<.001
F2(1,88)=12.72, p<.001

19. Discussion Is size coded in lexical representations?
Yes, for size words and for some like dwarf, giant.
Is size a feature of concrete nouns?
Yes, according to size-congruity studies.
However, these studies use a size comparison task.
Yes, according to current Lexical Decision results.
But, response criteria can still play a role.

20. Possible Explanation
Larger objects contain more Low spatial frequency (SF) information.
Low SF is transmitted faster thru magnocellular pathway.
Primary visual cortex & LGN are activated during imagery.
If imagery accompanies word recognition, this information may become available earlier for words referring to larger objects.
Thus, while both Big and Small items can be equally highly imageable, the relative speed of accessing a stored visual representation is faster when the object is bigger.

21. Conclusion Need to establish effect in other paradigms:
EM-reading in neutral context.
EM-reading in different contexts (e.g., large ant).
EEG, MEG, fMRI, & WHATNOT.
The Bottom Line…………………..

22. Bigger is FASTER