The recognition and cognitive utilization of oppositionality

This research series begins in the theoretical view that human cognition rests in part upon implicit oppositionality. Four experiments are presented, each of which builds on some aspect of the recognition and utilization of oppositionality. Experiment I (34 females, 46 males, in cross-validation) finds that subjects recognize antonymy as readily as synonymy in comparison with a control condition (p<.001). Experiment II demonstrates that subjects rely upon oppositionality to solve a problem as readily as on primacy/recency considerations (p<.001). Experiment III (27 males, 27 females) finds that a subject's ability to recognize the opposite meaning of sentences that have been exposed earlier increases with practice (p<.05). Experiment IV (10 females, 11 males) demonstrates that subjects who are given the set to look for either opposite or nonopposite sentence meanings can make oppositional decisions with equal or greater speed than nonoppositional decisions (p<.001). Implications for psycholinguistic theories are discussed.