Theses and Dissertations

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0001-1936-6075

Advisor

Karimi, Hossein

Committee Member

Jarosz, Andrew F.

Committee Member

Whitlock, Jonathon

Date of Degree

5-16-2025

Original embargo terms

Visible MSU Only 2 Years

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Campus Access Only

Major

Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Psychology

Abstract

Several studies have found a benefit for modified nouns (e.g., adorable puppy), such that they are easier to retrieve from memory compared to unmodified nouns (e.g., puppy) during language comprehension. However, there is some evidence that when the intrinsic semantic qualities of the modified noun do not fully match the content of modifiers (e.g., dangerous puppy), integration of the target noun and the modifiers becomes difficult, and the modification benefit is lost. If this integration difficulty can occur due to the semantic qualities of the modified noun, could it be the case that the semantic qualities of other competing nouns in the sentence (e.g., kitten) may have similar effects? To answer this question, two studies were conducted which manipulated how well modifiers matched the semantic qualities of two nouns in memory and measured the strength of the benefit during language production (experiment 1) and online comprehension (experiment 2).

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