Sascha Topolinski a & Fritz Strack a a University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany

Transcription

1 This article was downloaded by: [Uniwersytet Warszawski] On: 30 October 2014, At: 03:47 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: Registered office: Mortimer House, Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Cognition and Emotion Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: The analysis of intuition: Processing fluency and affect in judgements of semantic coherence Sascha Topolinski a & Fritz Strack a a University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany Published online: 30 Oct To cite this article: Sascha Topolinski & Fritz Strack (2009) The analysis of intuition: Processing fluency and affect in judgements of semantic coherence, Cognition and Emotion, 23:8, , DOI: / To link to this article: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sublicensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

2 forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

3 COGNITION AND EMOTION 2009, 23 (8), The analysis of intuition: Processing fluency and affect in judgements of semantic coherence Sascha Topolinski and Fritz Strack University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany In semantic coherence judgements individuals are able to intuitively discriminate whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent) or not (incoherent) without consciously retrieving the common associate. A processing-fluency account for these intuitions is proposed, which assumes that (a) coherent triads are processed more fluently than incoherent triads, (b) this high fluency triggers a subtle positive affect, and (c) this affect may be experienced as a cognitive feeling and used in explicit judgement. In line with this account, it was shown that coherent triads (a) are processed faster than incoherent triads (Study 1), (b) serve as positive affective primes (Study 2), and (c) are liked more than incoherent triads (Study 3). When participants were provided with an irrelevant source of their affective reactions, they lost the ability to intuitively discriminate between coherent and incoherent triads (Study 4). Finally, an item-based analysis found that triads that are processed faster are liked more and are more likely to be judged coherent, irrespective of their actual coherence (Study 5). Keywords: Intuition; Semantic coherence judgements; Processing fluency; Affect. In describing judgements and behaviour, the word intuitive has become popular to define a set of psychological phenomena that share certain properties (see Plessner, Betsch, & Betsch, 2008, for a recent review). In general, these are the features of intuitive processes: The individual has little awareness of them (e.g., Betsch, 2008; Deutsch & Strack, 2008; Hammond, 1996; Lieberman, 2000; Unkelbach & Plessner, 2008; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000). They are understood to be fast and effortless Correspondence should be addressed to: Sascha Topolinski, Department of Psychology II, Social Psychology, University of Wuerzburg, Roentgenring 10, Wuerzburg, Germany. sascha.topolinski@psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de We thank Rolf Reber, Reed Hunt, and Pierre Perruchet, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank Roland Deutsch for his statistical advice. We thank Annette Bolte and Nicola Baumann for providing the stimulus set. We also thank Friederike Finger, Irina Trost, and Rebecca Spatz for their help in data collection. # 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business DOI: /

4 1466 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK (e.g., Gigerenzer, Todd, & the ABC Research Group, 1999; Hamm, 2008; Hogarth, 2001, 2008; Stanovich & West, 2000) and independent from intention (e.g., Epstein, 1991, 1994; Hogarth, 2001, 2007; Topolinski & Strack, 2008). The experienced outcome of these underlying tacit, efficient, and fast mechanisms is often qualified as being a subtle affect or vibe (e.g., Epstein, 1991, 1994) or a cognitive feeling (e.g., Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001). Given these descriptions, we know the surface features of intuitive processes but have little insight into the underlying processes, a circumstance that led Catty and Halberstadt (2008) to state that intuition is still a black box of modern psychology. The purpose of the present work is to shed new light onto the underlying processes of intuition. One example of experimentally testable intuitions is judgements of semantic coherence, which have repeatedly been called intuitive (e.g., Bolte & Goschke, 2005; Dorfman, Shames, & Kihlstrom, 1996). Here, individuals are able to discriminate between semantically coherent and incoherent word triads without being able to articulate the cause for the coherence. The aim of the present account is to investigate how this intuitive capability functions. In the following, we will first describe coherence intuitions in more detail, then review previous explanations of this phenomenon, and finally outline a new fluency-affect account of intuition that was empirically tested in a series of five studies. Intuitive judgements of semantic coherence In their pioneering work on creativity, Mednick and Mednick (1967) introduced the Remote Associates Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962), which consists of word triads that are either coherent because they share a fourth common remote associate (e.g., SALT DEEP FOAM imply SEA) or are incoherent because they have no common associate (e.g., DREAM BALL BOOK). Confronted with these word triads, individuals were found to be able to discriminate between coherent and incoherent triads without an explicit retrieval of the common associate for the coherent triads (Baumann & Kuhl, 2002; Bolte, Goschke, & Kuhl, 2003; Bowers, Regehrs, Balthazard, & Parker, 1990), even under time pressure (Bolte & Goschke, 2005). What is known about the underlying mechanisms of this astonishing faculty? Kihlstrom (1999), as well as Dorfman et al. (1996), named the entire process implicit thought, but did not provide descriptions that were more detailed. There is a large amount of excellent works by Beeman and colleagues (e.g., Beeman et al., 1994; Bowden & Beeman, 1998; Bowden, Jung-Beeman, Fleck, & Kounios, 2005). However, this line of research is concerned with insight, i.e., the conscious retrieval of the solution concept, and not with an intuitive hunch concerning the existence of a solution word that has not yet been retrieved. There is at least one agreement

5 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1467 in the literature: these intuitions are based on the partial activation of the solution concept (Bolte et al., 2003; Bowden et al., 2005; Harkins, 2006; Ilg et al., 2007; Shames, 1994). That the processing of a RAT triad automatically activates its common associates was empirically shown by Beeman et al. (1994) and replicated by Topolinski and Strack (2008). However, little is understood about the link between the partial activation of the common associate and the emerging hunch of coherence, which can be called the black box of semantic coherence intuitions. In the literature, two candidates for this link are discussed; these are affect (e.g., Kuhl, 2000) and fluency (e.g., Perrig & Wippich, 1995). Affect. By 1986 Metcalfe had already called intuitions concerning coherence feelings of warmth (cf. Dorfman et al., 1996), which suggests some kind of positive affective quality. Further empirical evidence for this stems from Baumann and Kuhl (2002), as well from Bolte et al. (2003). In these studies, mood was induced and it was found that individuals in a positive mood more accurately discriminated between coherent and incoherent triads compared to individuals in a neutral mood, while participants in a negative mood completely lost the ability to intuitively detect coherence. These findings suggest that the processes underlying coherence judgements are influenced by mood. However, although these approaches altered the whole intuitive mechanism, they did not assess the affective processes running within that mechanism. Moreover, mood inductions alter the tonic affective state and exert an aligned effect on reactions to both coherent and incoherent triads. Thus we still do not know what triggers the specific coherence judgement that differentiates between coherent and incoherent triads. To understand how the partial activation of the solution word is felt in the coherence judgements, one should analyse phasic affective reactions occurring for each processed triad. A short-term affective reaction triggered by coherence would be the top candidate to underlie intuitive judgements. Most recently, this evidence was provided by Topolinski, Likowski, Weyers, and Strack (in press). They presented coherent and incoherent word triads to participants that were ignorant about the underlying semantic structures and found that coherent triads automatically triggered positive facial reactions involving the smiling muscle zygomaticus, which strongly suggests that coherence triggered a positive affect. However, how does this positive affect arise from the partial activation of the common associate? Fluency. The missing link between semantic activation and affect can be found in the anticipating work by Perrig and Wippich (e.g., 1995). Although applying it to visual coherence, they related the fluency of

6 1468 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK processing gestalt-like stimuli to the feeling of familiarity (Wippich & Mecklenbräuker, 1994) and the intuitive hunch of coherence (Perrig & Wippich, 1995; Perrig, Wippich, & Perrig, 1993; Wippich, 1994; Wippich, Mecklenbräuker, & Krisch, 1994). Other authors also described similar sounding feelings like perception of coherence for whole sentences (Whittlesea, 2004) or a non-sensory feeling of coherence or rightness (Mangan, 2001) but did not test the role of affect in these phenomena. The present approach integrates the aforementioned lines of research and presents a new account that describes step by step how distinct stages of semantic and affective information processing lead to the coherence judgement. For that purpose, we shall first introduce the concept of processing fluency, review the fluency literature that is relevant to intuitive judgements and describe our own model. A fluency-affect account for intuitive judgements of semantic coherence Fluency is the content-independent speed and accuracy of ongoing processing (see Reber, Wurtz, & Zimmermann, 2004b). On the level of perceptual processing, the processing ease may be called perceptual fluency (e.g., Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004a); on the level of stimulus meaning activation through semantic knowledge structures, it may be called conceptual fluency (e.g., Whittlesea, 1993). High processing fluency per se is assumed to elicit a mild, brief, and positive affect (Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001; Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003). This subtle positive affect can be become object to experiential awareness, especially when fluency of ongoing processes changes rapidly (e.g., Whittelsea & Williams, 2001a, 2001b), for instance, when processes execute either more easily or with more difficulty than expected (e.g., Hansen, Dechêne, & Wänke, 2008; Whittlesea & Williams, 1998). Having entered experiential awareness, this positive affect may serve as an internal signal, which can be the basis for a wide range of judgements depending on the context (cf. feelings as information, Schwarz, 1990; cognitive feelings, Clore, 1992; Clore et al., 2001): People may infer stimulus properties such as loudness (e.g., Jacoby, Allan, Collins, & Larwill, 1988), or clarity (e.g., Whittlesea, Jacoby, & Girard, 1990) from the positive feeling of ease, but also familiarity (e.g., Whittlesea, 1993), or even truth (e.g., Begg, Anas, & Farinacci, 1992; Reber & Schwarz, 1999). We propose that fluency-based affect also mediates intuitions concerning semantic coherence (see Reber et al., 2004a, for converging accounts of intuitions concerning prototypicality and grammaticality in artificial grammar learning; Reber, 1967), which will be outlined in the following: In reading a given word triad, the concepts of the triad are sequentially

7 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1469 processed in the semantic store, in which activation spreads in a fast and parallel fashion to related patterns that are associatively linked to the word (cf. Anderson, 1983; Topolinski & Strack, 2008). Because the three words of a coherent triad converge on single common associate, semantic spreading converges and activates this common concept, as was demonstrated by Beeman et al. (1994; see also Topolinski & Strack, 2008). Due to this partial semantic activation, the coherent triad as a whole is processed more fluently than expected, presumably because the common associate in turn facilitates the processing of the triad (see also the general discussion). This fluency impinges on the current affective state, which can be understood as core affect (Russell, 2003), that varies on the two raw dimensions valence and arousal. Core affect is a diffuse and automatic assessment of hedonically important factors such as the physiological milieu, but also reflects all the information processing going on (Russell, 2003). When processing takes place in an unexpectedly fluent fashion, the core affect will briefly adopt a somewhat more positive quality (Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). An important empirical clue for this mechanism was most recently provided by Topolinski et al. (in press) who showed that reading a coherent triad automatically activates the smiling muscle M. zygomaticus major, which is related to positive affect (e.g., Scherer & Ellgring, 2007). Although a certain core affect is always present, it enters experiential awareness only when it exceeds a certain threshold or changes rapidly (Russell, 2003). We propose that a fluency-induced change of core affect, albeit subtle and brief, is strong enough to enter into awareness and be experienced as a cognitive feeling of ease (Topolinski & Strack, in press) and may be used as an internal cue in any judgement. When people are asked to judge the coherence of a word triad, the feeling of ease becomes the basis for judgements of coherence. In the case of processing an incoherent triad, no change in fluency takes place because the random words do not mutually facilitate their processing, thus the core affect valence does not increase. Thus, the triad is judged incoherent. Aim of the present work To test the fluency-affect account outlined above, four important stages of the intuitive chain are assessed in the present work: First, it should be demonstrated that coherence increases fluency (Study 1). Specifically, we assumed coherent triads to be processed faster than incoherent triads, which can be measured by the speed of semantic processing (e.g., Reber et al., 2004a; Unkelbach, 2004). Second, it should be demonstrated that core affect valence is increased by coherence (Study 2). Here, we assumed coherent triads to function as more positive affective primes than incoherent triads. Third, it should be demonstrated that the subtle positive affect may emerge

8 1470 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK as an experienced feeling and may be used in any explicit judgement, for example, a liking judgement (Study 3). Here, we predicted that coherent word triads would be liked more than incoherent triads. Fourth, it should be demonstrated that the fluency-derived positive affect is the very cue that is used in semantic coherence judgements (Study 4). Here, we expected that coherence judgements would lose their validity when participants reattribute their affective responses to a source that is unrelated to the triads. For each of these stages, we conducted an experiment, which is reported below. Finally, Study 5 provides an item-based correlational analysis across Studies 14 to more simultaneously investigate the links between fluency, affect, and intuitive judgements. STUDY 1 The aim of this experiment was to test whether the semantic coherence of word triads facilitates their semantic processing, which has not been empirically addressed before. The fluency of processing can be measured by the mere processing speed (e.g., Reber et al., 2004a; Unkelbach, 2004). Because it yields response times for semantic judgements, a lexical decision task (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971), in which participants have to process word stimuli semantically to decide whether it is a real meaningful concept, seemed to be appropriate for that purpose. However, the performance in lexical decisions might be influenced by the length, prevalence, and possible repetitions of the words used in the triads. Therefore, a lexical analysis of these words was conducted, which will be reported in the results section. Method Participants. Forty (26 female) students from other disciplines than psychology participated for a reward of t3 (approximately US$3). The average age was 22 (SD2.4). Materials. A total of 36 coherent and 36 incoherent word triads from the stimulus set used in Bolte and Goschke (2005) were used. The words of the triads were presented stacked at the centre of a PC screen, each word written horizontally. An additional set of triads for the lexical-decision task (see below) was created such that 72 triads were taken from a different item pool of word triads used in Beeman et al. (1994), and these were translated into German. Then one of the words was exchanged with a pronounceable word-like letter string. The position of these nonwords (above, in the middle, or below) was randomly chosen. For the filler task (see below), 72 simple arithmetic equations were created of which 36 were correctly solved (e.g., 3412 ) and 36 were incorrectly solved (e.g., 3413 ).

9 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1471 Procedure. Participants were seated in front of the computer monitor without being informed about the semantic relations in the stimuli. Instead, they were told that the experiment assessed the ability of switching between tasks. Thus, participants were kept ignorant about the underlying semantic coherence of some of the triads. For the lexical decision task, participants were instructed to read the presented word triads, to decide whether the word group consisted of three existing real German words, or contained a nonword, and to press as quickly and as accurately as possible either the right or the left control key on the keyboard. To avoid priming effects between trials (cf. Becker, Moscovitch, Behrmann, & Joordens, 1997), the interval between the lexical decisions was extended by interspersing simple arithmetic problems. This procedure was also meant to keep the monotony of the task at a moderate level. For this filler task, participants were instructed to read the presented arithmetic equations and to decide whether they were correctly or incorrectly solved by pressing an appropriate key. Each of the 144 trials started with the presentation of a fixation cross in the middle of the computer screen for 500 ms followed by a blank screen for 100 ms. Then a triad was presented for a variable exposure duration until participants had made their lexical decisions. Subsequently, the arithmetic equation was presented until the participant made her/his correct/incorrect response. The sequence of triads and equations was randomly generated from the stimulus set for each participant. After half of all trials one break of a self-determined length was included. After the experimental session, a computer-directed debriefing was provided (see below). Control of psycholinguistic confounds. In order to exclude other systematic influences on the processing speed, the triads numbers of letters, numbers of syllables, the word classes of contained words, repeating word appearances among the triads, and the triad words frequencies in the German language were compared between coherent and incoherent word triads. The mean number of letters was 16.6 (SD3.4) for coherent, and 16.0 (SD2.0) for incoherent word triads, t(70)b0.98. The mean number of syllables was 5.08 (SD1.4) for coherent, and 5.06 (SD1.1) for incoherent word triads, t(70)b0.01. Regarding word classes of the contained triads, a coherent triad averagely contained 2.36 nouns (SD0.72), 0.14 verbs (SD 0.42), and 0.5 adjectives (SD0.70), while an average incoherent triad contained 2.36 nouns (SD0.72), 0.22 verbs (SD0.42), and 0.42 adjectives (SD0.60). None of these differences between coherent and incoherent triads was reliable (all tsb0.8). Because the repeated presentation of a word leads to faster correct lexical decisions (e.g., Logan, 1988, 1990), the proportion of words that were contained in more than one triad was analysed for the coherent and

10 1472 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK incoherent triad pools. For example, the word head appeared three times in three different triads, while the word cross appeared in only one triad. If coherent triads were to contain more of these repeated words than incoherent triads, possible differences in processing speed could be explained by these mere repetitions. The frequency of appearances for each of the 169 words was counted and then for each triad the average of words appearances was calculated. The average frequency of appearances for words contained in coherent triads (1.48) was not reliably different from the average appearances of words contained in incoherent triads (1.51), t(70)b Also, the frequency of the triads words in everyday language might affect processing fluency, with high-frequency words being processed faster than low-frequency words in lexical decision tasks (e.g., Allen, Smith, Lien, Grabbe, & Murphy, 2005; Balota & Chumbley, 1984; Scarborough, Cortese, & Scarborough, 1977; but also see Adelman, Brown, & Quesada, 2006). To examine this possibility, word frequency was assessed using the lexicon of German words from the University of Leipzig (available on wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de), which provides frequency classes numerically increasing with infrequence. For every triad, the average of the frequency classes of its constituent words was calculated. The mean average frequency class turned out to be 11.1 for coherent and 10.5 for incoherent triads, which was not a statistically reliable difference, but rather revealed the tendency that words in coherent triads were even more infrequent than words in incoherent triads, t(70)1.55, p.126. In sum, none of the checked linguistic parameters differed reliably between coherent and incoherent word triads and thus could not account for possible differences in lexical decision time. Debriefing. In order to control for explicit knowledge of the semantic structure of the presented triads, participants were asked for any systematic cues in the triads they had to read. We critically discuss the issue of possible explicit knowledge in this study in the discussion. Two participants reported having had the impression that some triads consisted of interrelated words or formed a mental image while reading. Both individuals were discarded from further analyses. Results Response latencies. Only response latencies for the 36 coherent and 36 incoherent word triads were analysed. Of the resulting 2736 responses 109 (4%) were incorrect and therefore discarded from analysis. Because very fast or very slow reactions are likely to be spurious (cf. Ratcliff, 1993), response latencies of more than 2 standard deviations above or below the condition

11 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1473 mean (coherent and incoherent) were dropped, which was true for 99 (3.7%) responses. A planned comparison using a paired t-test revealed that the remaining response latencies were shorter for coherent word triads (M 1480 ms, SD309.6) than for incoherent word triads (M1537 ms, SD 337.6), t(37)2.18, pb.036, d0.18. Discussion Participants made a lexical decision about the three words of coherent word triads 54 ms faster than a lexical decision about the three words in an incoherent triad. Although the effect was small, it reveals that coherent triads are processed faster than incoherent triads irrespective of word length, word classes, word repetitions, or word frequency in everyday language. Also, the effect can not be attributed to participants evaluating the coherence of triads, since participants did not know of the hidden semantic structure. It is important to note that this is not a classical semantic priming effect. One could easily explain this effect by assuming that the constituents of coherent triads primed each other and thus mutually facilitated their processing. However, Bolte and Goschke (2005) showed that coherent and incoherent triads do not differ in the semantic interrelatedness of their constituents. Words in coherent triads are not more associated to each other than words in incoherent triads, they are only remotely associated to a common associate. The present effect can thus only be attributed to the partial activation of the common associate. A possible objection may be that the effect that coherence exerts on fluency may not be automatically driven but may rather be caused by conscious solutions of the presented word triads. Simply testing possible conscious retrievals of solutions words by asking participants afterwards whether they detected the hidden semantic coherence may not be sensitive enough since participants may have forgotten about sporadic insights they had during the task. However, possible retrievals of the solution concept cannot in any way account for the effect in the present paradigm used. During the lexical decision task, participants read the three appearing words, judged the lexical status of the words, and pressed the response key. The time this process took is the critical dependent measure. Following the logic underlying the remote associate triads used here, the common associate could not be activated until all three words were semantically processed (cf. Mednick, 1962). This means, a possible solution concept could only pop into mind after all the three words were read, that means probably after the lexical decision and pressing the button. However, even if the solution word popped into mind before the response was carried out, this process would decelerate the response by interrupting

12 1474 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK the ongoing transition from intention to behaviour execution (Strack & Deutsch, 2004). The appearing solution word would simply work as a distraction from the task. Since spontaneous retrievals of the common associate can only occur in trials with coherent triads, they would systematically increase response latencies for coherent triads, thus operating against our effect. The next step in the supposed mechanism is the increase of core affect valence by coherent word triads, which was addressed in the following experiment. STUDY 2 We propose that the unexpected high fluency in processing a coherent word triad, which was demonstrated in Experiment 1, may lead to an increase in positive core affect valence (cf. Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Empirical support for this hypothesis was most recently provided by Topolinski et al. (in press). They presented coherent and incoherent word triads to participants who were ignorant about the underlying semantic structures. While participants merely read the triads, their facial reactions were assessed via facial electromyography (EMG). It turned out that reading coherent triads automatically activated the smiling muscle Zygomaticus major and relaxed the frowning muscle Corrugator supercilii compared to reading incoherent triads. Since the zygomaticus is generally connected to positive affect and the corrugator to negative affect (e.g., Cacioppo, Petty, Losch, & Kim, 1986), this finding strongly suggests that coherence triggered a positive core affect. On the stage of information processing we are interested in this experiment, core affect is a diffuse affective state (Stapel, Koomen, & Ruys, 2002) that is not necessarily object to experiential awareness or introspection (see introduction section) and can exist without being labelled or interpreted (Russell, 2003). Thus, the subtle and brief change of core affect might not be traced by direct measures of affect such as self-report (cf. Quirin, 2005; Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2008; Stapel et al., 2002; Winkielman & Berridge, 2004). To assess its valence the procedure of affective priming (Fazio, 2001) may be used, in which an evaluative adjective or noun is judged to be either good or bad after being preceded by an affect-laden prime word. If prime and target have the same affective connotation, the evaluation that is associated with the prime word typically facilitates the processing of affectively congruent target words (e.g., disgusting preceded by cockroach ) and thus leads to faster evaluations of the target (e.g., Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986). Our processing-fluency account predicts that coherent word triads may serve as positive affective primes. Note that this should be understood as an indirect affective priming, because it is not the affective value of the triad

13 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1475 constituents per se that is expected to prime subsequent evaluations but the increased core affect valence that results from the processing of the triad. Specifically, we assumed that the fluency-induced increase in core affect valence in processing a coherent triad should facilitate subsequent processing of positively evaluated concepts and hamper the processing of negatively evaluated concepts. In the case of incoherent word triads, which presumably do not influence core affect at all, we expected no influence on the subsequent processing of evaluative concepts. Before we proceed, two important methodological problems have to be discussed. Word valences within the triads. As an important confounding factor, the affective valence associated with the single constituents of a given triad had to be taken into account. To provide an example, the triad THREAD PINE PAIN is a coherent triad because of the common associate NEEDLE but contains the negatively associated constituent PAIN; while the triad HAPPY PIG ANGEL is an incoherent triad but contains two positively associated constituents. In the first case the assumed positive priming effect of semantic congruence could be undermined by the negative valence of one triad member, in the second case the assumed null priming effect of incoherent word triads could be distorted by the positive valence of single triad members. To ascertain that the valences of the constituents do not differ between coherent and incoherent triads, all 169 different words constituting the triads had to be evaluated by a different sample of participants. Given that the semantic valence of coherent triads does not differ from that of the incoherent triads, the expected positive priming effect of coherent triads can be attributed to the enhanced processing fluency in coherent triads. Spontaneous solutions for triads. Again, the problem of solution words sporadically popping into participants minds in coherent trials is to be considered. In Experiment 1, we did not inform the participants about the underlying semantic structure in half of the items (the coherent triads) and only assessed whether they detected some systematic cues in the words after the experiment. This approach has the advantage that participants are kept ignorant about the rationale of coherence; they do not actively scan for coherence or search for a solution word. Any effect that is found under this condition suggests that the intuitive chain we are describing runs automatically (Topolinski et al., in press) and independently from the cognisers problem-solving attempts (Topolinski & Strack, 2008). However, this approach cannot rigorously control for trials in which participants involuntarily retrieve the common associate of a given coherent triad (cf. Bolte & Goschke, 2005). Such a spontaneous solving may elicit a brief positive affect that is not derived from coherence-triggered fluency

14 1476 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK (cf. the Aha-experience ; e.g., Bowden & Beeman, 1998), which would make the findings ambiguous. A strict control of spontaneous solution word retrievals is to ask the participant for a possible solution word right after each trial (cf. Baumann & Kuhl, 2002; Bolte et al., 2003). In identifying and discarding those trials in which the participant came up with a correct solution this approach rules out the confounding of spontaneous retrievals. However, this paradigm has the disadvantage that participants have to be informed about the underlying semantic structures; they are not ignorant any more. Because of these points, we implemented both controls for spontaneous solution word retrievals in the following study. The liberal control (only asking for conspicuities after the experiment) keeps the participants ignorant and demonstrates the automaticity of the intuitive chain; the rigorous control (asking participants for a solution word after each trial) rules out that explicit retrievals trigger a positive affect. Method Participants. Sixty-eight (37 female) students from other disciplines than psychology participated for a reward of t2 (approximately US$2). The average age was 26 (SD6.4). Materials. As indirect affective primes, the same set of 36 coherent and 36 incoherent triads as well as the 72 triads with nonwords from Experiment 1 was used. As targets for the affective priming, 36 nouns and adjectives with positive valence and 36 nouns and adjectives with a negative valence were taken from the evaluative norms in Schwibbe, Räder, Schwibbe, Borchardt, and Geiken-Pophanken (1994). The positive and negative stimulus sets were matched for word length (12 syllables, 310 letters per word) and proportion of adjectives and nouns. Only words not contained in the triads and not associated with a solution word of the coherent triads were used. Procedure. The rationale of the experimental procedure was simply to replicate the lexical decision task of Experiment 1 and to add an evaluative judgement. Participants were instructed that the study was about deciphering of single words and word groups. The procedure was identical to that of Experiment 1, except for the arithmetic filler task. After each lexical decision for a word triad, the single target word was presented for variable exposure duration. Participants were instructed to decide whether the presented word was of a positive or negative valence and to press as quickly and as accurately as possible either the right or the left control key on the computer keyboard (key assignment was balanced across participants independently for the lexical decision and the evaluation). Each participant received 9 trials

15 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1477 from each of the following prime-target combinations: (1) a coherent triad followed by a positive target; (2) a coherent triad followed by a negative target; (3) an incoherent triad followed by a positive target; or (4) an incoherent triad followed by a negative target. Additionally, the participants received the same number of trials containing different incoherent triads with a nonword*similar to Experiment 1*and positive and negative words, respectively, resulting in a total of 72 trials. The stimuli for each trial were chosen randomly without repetition so that each participant read each triad and each target word only once. The sequence of trials was randomly generated anew for each participant. No break was included in the experimental block. Finally, a debriefing was undertaken. Control for spontaneous solution word retrievals. In the liberal control group (N38), participants were not informed about the semantic coherence rationale. After the experiment, they were only asked for any systematic cues in the stimuli. In the rigorous control group (N30), participants were told that some of the appearing word triads had a common denominator and were shown four samples of coherent triads (which did not appear later in the experimental block). To minimise the distraction that an active search for the common associate would exert on the lexical decision and the evaluation, participants were additionally told that their main task was to react as quickly and accurately as possible in the tasks, not to find out the solution. After each trial (after the lexical decision for the triad and the eventual evaluation of the single word), participants were asked to type in a possible solution word and were provided with a response window of 3 s (similar to Bolte & Goschke, 2005). Stimulus rating. In order to estimate the valence of the words constituting the triads, a paper questionnaire containing all 169 words was assembled with 12 words printed on every page and a Likert response scale below each word. The sequence of words was random and was the same for every participant. The questionnaire was given to N55 undergraduate psychology students for no reward. Participants were told that their personal liking of these stimuli had to be rated for later experimental implementations on an 8-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (I do not like it at all) to7(i like it very much). The mean liking rating for all words was 3.90 (SD1.04), ranging from 0.70 (for the word amputation ) to 6.39 (for the word love ). The valence of a whole triad was calculated by averaging the valences of its constituent words. A planned comparison revealed no significant difference between the word valences for coherent triads (M 3.67, SD0.94) and for incoherent triads (M3.75, SD0.92; tb0.37). Thus, a possible affective priming effect could not be due to the valences of the constituents of the triads.

16 1478 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK Debriefing in the liberal control group. As in Experiment 1, participants were asked for any systematic cues in the triads they had to read. Four participants reported the impression that some words belonged to each other or the triad had a certain topic, without being able to give examples. These individuals were discarded from further analyses. Results Solved triads in the rigorous control group. On average, the participants solved 1.1 triads. The trials in which the correct solution word was indicated were discarded from further analyses. Response times for lexical decisions. Because of the similar procedure, Experiment 2 can be considered a replication of the lexical decision task of Experiment 1. Of the lexical decisions 3.9% were incorrect and were therefore discarded from the analyses and additionally 4.8% of the response times were dropped because they were more than two standard deviations above or below the individual condition mean (coherent and incoherent). Over the remaining trials a 2 (Coherence: coherent vs. incoherent triads)2 (Control Condition: liberal control, rigorous control) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run with the second as a between factor. We found only a main effect for Coherence, F(1, 66)9.59, pb.01, h 2 p.13, all other FsB.5. In a planned comparison, response times again were shorter for coherent word triads (M1580 ms, SD373) than for incoherent ones (M1627 ms, SD413), t(67)3.16, pb.01. Response times for target evaluations. Only the response times for trials with coherent and incoherent triads were analysed. Of the remaining 2448 responses, 119 (5.0%) were incorrect and therefore discarded from analysis. Response latencies more than two standard deviations above or below the individual condition mean (coherencevalence) were dropped, which was true for additional 103 (4.4%) responses. A 2 (Coherence: coherent triads, incoherent triads)2 (Valence: positive target words, negative target words)2 (Control Condition: liberal control, rigorous control) analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the last being a between factor yielded solely a significant interaction between Coherence and Valence, F(1, 66)5.62, pb.02, h 2 p.08, and no other effects (all other FsB1.5). As evidenced by Figure 1, planned tests of simple effects for evaluation latencies did not yield significant differences between positive and negative targets when an incoherent triad served as a prime (M positive 1020 ms, SD371, vs. M negative 998 ms, SD284), t(67)b0.5, but did significantly differ in the case of coherent triads (M positive 1001 ms, SD306, vs. M negative 1089 ms, SD398), t(67)2.89, pb.005. As can be seen in Figure 1, this effect is

17 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1479 Figure 1. Response times for positive and negative target evaluations preceded by coherent and incoherent prime triads. only due to an increase in response time when a coherent triad precedes a negative target. Accordingly, response times for the evaluation of a negative target differed significantly between coherent and incoherent trials (1089 ms vs. 998 ms), t(67)2.20, pb.04. Discussion The finding of Experiment 1*that coherent triads are processed faster than incoherent triads*was replicated. Furthermore, the results of Experiment 2 confirmed our hypotheses with respect to the indirect affective priming: The semantic processing of a coherent triad hampered the subsequent evaluation of negative target words while incoherent triads did not influence subsequent evaluation judgement times. This result stands in line with the earlier result that coherent triads automatically trigger positive facial reactions (Topolinski et al., in press). It is also in line with Baumann and Kuhl (2002), who previously connected the detection of coherence to affect. More specifically, they argued that the perception of incoherence is closely associated to negative affect (see also Kuhl, 2000) and showed that the ability to regulate negative affect is associated with intuition. We did not find a difference between the two techniques to control for spontaneous retrievals of solution words. The effect appears both when participants are ignorant about the underlying semantic coherence, which suggests that the indirect affective priming is an automatic process

18 1480 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK independent of participants intentions to find a common associate (cf. Topolinski & Strack, 2008), and when trials are discarded in which the solution word was spontaneously retrieved, which shows that this effect is not due to the explicit retrieval of the common associate and possible positive affect arising from this insight (cf. Bowden & Beeman, 1998). Yet, the conclusion that coherent triads serve as positive affective primes may be questioned by the fact that there was no facilitation effect, i.e., response times for evaluating positive targets were not shorter for coherent triad primes than for incoherent triad primes. However, at least three arguments speak against this objection. First, a floor effect might be responsible for this result: In our double task paradigm (lexical decisions for three words altering with evaluations of single words), the evaluative judgement took at least 940 ms on the average and could not be further accelerated. Second, although it has been argued that both inhibition and facilitation account for affective priming (e.g., Hermans, De Houwer, & Eelen, 1994; Hermans, Crombez, & Eelen, 2000) the relative contribution of facilitation in affective priming is*according to some evidence*smaller than that of inhibition (e.g., Chaiken & Bargh, 1993). It was even found to disappear when the affective primes were weak (see the original work by Fazio et al., 1986, Experiments 12). Given that coherent word triads consisting of three words with possibly different affective values can be regarded as weak affective primes, the result is in line with prior findings. Third, there is evidence that the inhibition of incongruent contents, as was the case in our results, takes place in trials with very short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA; i.e., the time interval between presentation of the prime and presentation of the target), while facilitation effects are found in trials with longer SOAs (Hermans, De Houwer, & Eelen, 2001). This means that inhibition of incongruent associative contents can be found in the initial stages of affective processing. In the following, we will argue that in our paradigm, the evaluative judgements also took place in an initial state of the affective processing. Although in our experiment the SOA might be considered to be quite long, namely at least 1500 ms (the average time it took participants to complete the lexical decision task for the triads), the time course of the indirect affective priming obtained here is different from other affective priming processes. Specifically, we have argued that it is not the valence of the triads constituting words that produces the affective priming, but the increased core affect valence that results from the high fluency in processing the coherent triads. Thus, the core affect valence cannot be increased until the whole triad is processed. Furthermore, Bolte and Goschke s (2005) finding that intuitive judgements*presumably based on the increased core affect*are diagnostic only after 1500 ms of processing a triad, but not after 1000 ms, also indicates that this mechanism needs time to develop. Given these considerations, it is reasonable to assume that in our indirect affective

19 FLUENCY AND AFFECT IN SEMANTIC COHERENCE JUDGEMENTS 1481 priming paradigm, the increase of core affect just set in when the targets were to be evaluated. Thus, the exclusive inhibitory affective priming effect of word triads is in line with Hermans et al. s (2001) finding. In sum, the findings so far suggest that the processing of coherent triads does automatically increase core affect valence, which cannot be explained by the affective valence of the single triad constituents or spontaneous retrievals of solution words. Although the effect is promising, we wanted to provide a more in-depth analysis of the causal link between coherence, fluency in the lexical decision, and the evaluative priming effect. (1) Fluency and evaluative priming effect. If we assume that high fluency facilitates subsequent positive evaluations and hampers subsequent negative evaluations, we would expect the following on the level of the single trials: The faster the lexical decision is accomplished, the higher the fluency gain and the positive affect increase are. The higher this positive affect increase the faster a subsequent positive evaluation would be carried out, but the slower a subsequent negative evaluation. Consequently, we would expect that response latencies in the lexical decision would be positively linked to response times in subsequent positive evaluations but would be negatively linked to response times in subsequent negative evaluations on a trial level. (2) Coherence, fluency, and evaluative priming effect. According to our account, coherence exerts its influence on the evaluative priming effect via fluency. Consequently, coherence would predict the evaluative priming effect (which was shown on the subjects level in the proceeding sections), but would loose this influence when fluency was taken into account. In the following, we test both predictions (1) and (2). Trial-based analyses. To test the relation between fluency and evaluative priming effect we wanted to predict the response time variations in the evaluative priming task with the response time variations in the lexical decision task on a trial level. To obtain response-time gains or losses for each trial, we calculated the difference between a given trial and the subject s mean response time latency, for the lexical decisions and the evaluations, respectively. 1 A positive value here indicates a response-time gain, which means in this particular trial the participant reacted faster than she/he did on average. A negative value indicates a response-time loss. Response-time gains two standard deviations above or below the individual mean were dropped, which was true for 4% of the remaining trials regarding the lexical decisions and 6% of the remaining trials regarding the evaluations. Then we performed a multiple regression analysis with the response-time gain in the evaluation 1 An analysis using not the gains but rather the raw response latencies yielded a similar, but less pronounced pattern.

20 1482 TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK as criterion. As predictors we entered both a dummy-coded condition factor of valence (indicating whether the evaluation in the particular trials was positive or negative), as well as the response-time gain of the lexical decision. Additionally, we entered the interaction term for valence, and response-time gain in the lexical decision. Results showed that only valence, standardised b.19, F(1, 3162) 64.04, pb.001, as well as the predicted interaction between valence and response-time gain in the lexical decision, standardised b.14, F(2, 2119) 12.12, pb.001, were significant. Consequently, as can be seen in Table 1, response-time gains in the lexical decision for a given triad were positively correlated to response-time gains in positive evaluations, but were negatively correlated to response-time gains in negative evaluations. To test whether coherence exerts influence on the evaluative priming via fluency, we used the same response-time gains and losses on a trial level. In the subjects level analysis, we only found an effect of coherence on subsequent negative evaluations (see also Figure 1). Hence, we conducted a univariate analysis of variance with Coherence (coherent triads, incoherent triads) predicting the response time variations in negative evaluations, which yielded a significant influence of Coherence, F(1, 1478)11.88, pb.001, h p However, after inserting response time variations in the lexical decision task as a covariate the influence of coherence disappeared (FB.8). Going beyond simple condition differences, the additional trial-based analyses revealed that the fluency of the lexical decision actually predicted the affective priming effect: The faster the lexical decision was executed, the faster a subsequent positive evaluation was carried out, but the slower a subsequent negative evaluation was carried out. More importantly, an additional meditational analysis revealed that coherence influenced response latencies in the evaluative priming task via response-time variations in the TABLE 1 Pearson correlations between response-time gains for lexical decisions and evaluations on a trial-level Valence of evaluation Coherence in lexical decision Positive Negative Coherent triads.22**.13* (N817) (N784) Incoherent triads.24**.08 * (N799) (N695) Note: *pb.01; **pb.001 (one-sided). See text for a description of the calculation of response-time gains. Higher values indicate higher response-time gains.