Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The current studies investigated whether speakers can prepare to swear the same way they prepare non-taboo words.Swearing, when produced reflexively, has greater right hemisphere activation than normal production suggesting thatswearing is a different linguistic process. We used a form preparation paradigm to consider phonological preparation fornon-reflexive swearing. Participants were given two types of lists; homogeneous - all words shared phonological onset(e.g. /f/ - feet, fork, film, fuck), and heterogeneous nothing shared (e.g. film, shit, dock, poll). Results indicated thetaboo words did not contravene preparation for homogeneous sets, and taboo words were facilitated similarly to non-taboo words. Next, we tested variable homogeneous sets (taboo item was inconsistent with majority onset, e.g. shit, film,fork, feet) to understand whether increased attention to taboo items would disable preparation. Results showed reducedpreparation for items sharing the majority onset in variable sets, but preparation was still significant.