Knowing what you need to know in advance: The neural processes underpinning flexible semantic retrieval of thematic and taxonomic relations.

ABSTRACT: Semantic retrieval is flexible, allowing us to focus on subsets of features and associations that are relevant to the current task or context: for example, we use taxonomic relations to locate items in the supermarket (carrots are a vegetable), but thematic associations to decide which tools we need when cooking (carrot goes with peeler). We used fMRI to investigate the neural basis of this form of semantic flexibility; in particular, we asked how retrieval unfolds differently when participants have advanced knowledge of the type of link to retrieve between concepts (taxonomic or thematic). Participants performed a semantic relatedness judgement task: on half the trials, they were cued to search for a taxonomic or thematic link, while on the remaining trials, they judged relatedness withou

SUBMITTER: Zhang M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7779371 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature