Moses beats Adam: A semantic relatedness effect on a semantic illusion

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the role of semantic relatedness in the occurence of semantic illusions like the Moses illusion (first described by Erickson and Mattson 1981). This illusion is investigated by using statements with inaccurate proper names varying in degree of overlap in attributes with target names and by registering judgment times. The results show a clear effect of semantic relatedness. Inaccuracies more often appeared to be left unnoticed in high-related statements than in low-related statements. Furthermore, the results of the corresponding judgment times indicate that judging statements with high-related inaccurate names need the same amount of time as judging statements with low-related names. However, more errors are made in this same amount of time, which indicates that high-related statements are processed less extensively. Finally, to achieve a precise judgment of high-related statements takes more time compared with low-related statements. In other words, more time is needed to unmask a high-related inaccuracy.