The language of intuition: a thematic integration model of intuitive coherence judgments

ABSTRACT

People can intuitively distinguish semantically coherent from incoherent word triads, even without knowing the common denominator. Drawing on cognitive linguistics, the present authors suggest that intuitive coherence judgments are driven by the thematic relations of the triad words. Words are thematically related when they perform different roles in the same scenario (e.g. CHICKEN and EGG are related via a production theme). Thematic relations differ from associations (CHICKEN and LITTLE are associated with a Disney movie) and taxonomic relations, which specify common attributes between concepts (CHICKEN and SPARROW are both birds). Consistent with the thematic integration model, word triads with thematic (rather than taxonomic) relations were more often judged as coherent (Study 1). Moreover, priming thematic (rather than taxonomic) processing led to more intuitive coherence judgments of word triads (Study 2). In three published datasets, thematic relations between triads’ word pairs predicted over half of the variance in intuitive coherence judgments (Study 3). Finally, when the existence of a common denominator and thematic relations were independently manipulated, thematic relations drove intuitive coherence judgments (Study 4). These findings demonstrate that intuition draws on people’s thematic knowledge about the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Semantic coherence task
• intuition
• thematic relations

Acknowledgments

We thank Anette Bolte, Thomas Goschke, Miguel Kazén, Julius Kuhl, and Markus Quirin for providing materials and Felix Schönbrodt and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. Moreover, we thank Sofia Hohmann, Karina Mikonska, Ann-Kathrin Jiménez-Klingberg, and Haneen Ajub for collecting data and Ingrid Baum for helpful comments and proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors ‘note’

Study 3 and 4 were presented at the 59th Conference for Experimental Psychologists (TEAP) in Dresden, Germany (2017).

Data availability statement

The datasets that support the findings of this study are available on the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/xk8ur/. All raw data are available from the corresponding author, Tobias Maldei, upon request.

Notes

1 Levene-test of error variance indicated that the thematic and taxonomic relatedness rating condition might differ substiantially in error variance, Levene-stats ≥ .3.55, p ≤ .062. Thus, we conducted Mann-Whitney-U-test to contrast ratings between the two conditions. Results indicated that ratings on thematic compared to taxonomic relations were higher for triads with and without a common denominator, Mann-Whitney-U ≥ .207.00, p < .001.

2 Because of an error, nine triads of the control list were also presented in the alternative triad list. We excluded these triads for the final analysis. Nevertheless, even when the triads were included in the analysis, we still found a significant interaction effect supporting our hypothesis, F(1, 55) = 40.77, p < .001, η² = .42.