Semantic interference from objects both in and out of a scene context

Prior studies have found that, despite the intentions of the participants, objects automatically activate their semantic representations; however, this research examined only objects presented in isolation without a background context. The present set of experiments examined the automaticity issue for objects presented in isolation as well as in scenes. In Experiments 1 and 2, words were categorized more slowly when they were embedded inside incongruent objects (e.g., the word chair in a picture of a duck) than inside neutral nonobjects, suggesting that the meanings of the objects were activated despite participants' intentions. A new interference task was introduced in Experiment 3. When the same objects and words from the first 2 experiments were inserted into scenes in which those objects were probable or improbable, interference occurred from probable pictured objects but not from improbable pictured objects. Implications for theories of automaticity and models of object identification are discussed.