Semantic Influences on Ordering Tasks
John Beverley, Nate Lauffer · 2023
It has been suggested that when presented with an ordering task, people tend default to ordering items linearly. Literature on this topic is underdeveloped and problematic, insofar experiments typically employ relations like ‘greater than’ to evaluate default ordering tendencies in participants. Yet, such relations may prime participants to favor linear orderings. Recent follow-up studies strongly suggest participants do not default to linear ordering. It is plausible, moreover, that ordering tendencies can be primed. The present work explores the extent to which priming for linear or partial orders can affect tendencies to employ linear or partial ordering strategies when tasked with ordering lists. Our two experiments suggest a powerful interaction between priming and task, and demonstrate that once the experiment instructions are cleared of potentially confounding, potentially priming, semantic content, participants perform equally with respect to constructing linear or partial orders under similar conditions.