At the Speed of a Verb: Grammatical Class of Stimuli Affects Response Time in Surveys and Syntactic Classification Tasks

Abstract

Verbs, as the conventional linguistic category for expressing action and motion, possess meta-semantic associations specifically with action-orientation—associations not typically found in other grammatical classes (e.g., nouns). The central aim of this research was to examine whether the proposed association between verbs and action manifests in shorter response times for verbs compared to other grammatical forms. In Studies 1a and 1b (N_1a = 136, N_1b = 323), we examined the impact of exposure to verbs versus nouns on overall completion time for a complex questionnaire survey. In Studies 2a and 2b (N_2a = 92, N_2b = 96), we employed a syntactic classification task to investigate behavioral responses to verbs and nouns, using a pseudoword paradigm in which carefully constructed lexical stimuli were devoid of semantic meaning but clearly conveyed grammatical class through suffixes. Across all four experiments, we consistently observed shorter response times for verbs and pseudoverbs compared to nouns and pseudonouns, suggesting that grammatical class exerts meta-semantic effects on behavior.