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Article published In:
The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 15:2 (2020) ► pp.366–383
Methodological and analytic considerations

Can the maze task be even more amazing?

Adapting the maze task to advance psycholinguistic experimentation

| Brock University
| Brock University

The maze task (Forster, Guererra & Elliot, 2009; Forster, 2010) is designed to measure focal lexical and sentence processing effects in a highly controlled manner. We discuss how this task can be modified and extended to provide a unique opportunity for the investigation of lexical effects in sentence context. We present results that demonstrate how the maze task can be used to examine both facilitation and inhibition effects. Most importantly, it can do this while leaving the target sentence unchanged across conditions. This is an advantage that is not available with other paradigms. We also present new versions of the maze task that allow for the isolation of specific lexical effects and that enhance the measurement of lexical recognition through visual animation. Finally, we discuss how the maze task brings to the foreground the extent to which complex multi-layered priming and inhibition are intrinsic to sentence reading and how the maze task can tap this complexity.

Keywords: methodology, maze task, lexical priming, sentence processing, gamification, incrementality
Article outline
  • It’s amazing already
    • The maze task and discrete unidirectionality
    • The maze task and incremental integration
  • How can it be more amazing?
  • How to use the maze task to investigate both lexical priming and interference effects
  • How to isolate specific lexical effects in sentence reading through maze simplification
  • How to enhance the measurement of lexical recognition time through visual animation
  • Experiment 1
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedure
    • Results
      • Modeling
      • Prime condition
      • Maze type
  • Experiment 2
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedures
    • Results
      • Data preparation
      • Modeling
  • General discussion
    • Experiment 1
    • Experiment 2 and additional maze task innovation
  • References
Published online: 6 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.20027.gal
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