Recruitment of newly acquired category exemplars into unconscious processing systems is rapid and durable

In a series of 3 unconscious priming experiments, we investigated if newly acquired English language words can become integrated into unconscious processing systems, and what preconditions are required to enable this process. In each experiment participants learned English language names of extremely rare fish and flowers in a single learning session. After a varying interval of time and in some cases a brief session of repeated conscious exposure (relearning), the newly learned words were presented as briefly flashed, visually masked primes in a standard unconscious category priming procedure. Results show that newly acquired words are recruited quickly into unconscious processing systems. Furthermore, this acquisition persists for at least 48 h and is dependent on prime duration. Since priming was only obtained after an interval that included overnight sleep, consolidation during sleep may play a role in the integration of novel words into unconscious processing systems.     

Do spelling variations affect associative and phonological priming by pseudohomophones?

A nonword prime can sound like a target word or one of the target's associates, and it can look like either without sounding like either. These pseudohomophones and pseudohomographs can vary in the number of letters shared with the target or its associate. In an associative priming experiment in which targets were named and prime duration was 125 msec within a mask-prime-mask-target sequence, pseudohomophones primed and pseudohomographs did not, with the pseudoassociative priming being only weakly affected by spelling differences. In three further experiments, prime homophony and homography were defined in respect to the target. Prime durations were 125 and 21 msec within a mask-prime-mask-target sequence and 57 msec within a mask-prime-target sequence. The superior priming by pseudohomophones was relatively insensitive to spelling. Results are discussed in terms of the phonological coherence hypothesis and the roles for orthographic information implied by the hypothesis.     

Semantic priming,prime reportability,and retroactive priming are interdependent

In two experiments, semantic analysis of prime words was measured in terms of facilitation in naming a semantically related target word. Targets were degraded but gradually clarified until the subject named them. Subjects reported the prime after naming the target. Experiment 1 used semantic associates as primes at a 50-msec prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Experiment 2 used both semantic-associate and identity primes at a 1,000-msec prime-target SOA. Reported primes showed facilitation in both experiments, whereas unreported primes did not. It appears that primes that undergo enough analysis to facilitate target processing are also available for conscious report. However, retroactive priming in both experiments showed that target processing also had an impact on prime reportability. The interdependence of priming and prime reportability disallows a straightforward interpretation of the origin of the facilitation.     

Semantic priming and identification of near threshold primes in a lexical decision task

Three experiments examined both the impact of semantic analysis of 50-msec, masked visual primes on a target response and the impact of semantic analysis of the target on a prime response. The first two experiments used a prime-target interval of 1000 msec. In Experiment 1, subjects reported the identity of each prime: (a) after a lexical decision about the target, (b) both before and after a lexical decision, or (c) after a target detection response. Prime report after both types of target response showed retroactive priming in which report was facilitated by related targets and inhibited by unrelated targets. Analyses of lexical decision latency and accuracy conditionalized on prime report showed that semantic priming was restricted to reported related primes. In Experiment 2, subjects made no overt response to the primes. Priming was conditionalized on recognition of the primes on a subsequent test. The pattern was the same as Experiment 1: There was priming only for recognized primes; recognition memory showed a pattern consistent with retroactive priming. Experiment 3 also conditionalized priming on recognition performance but used a prime-target interval of only 250 msec. Again, semantic priming was found only for recognized primes, and recognition memory revealed retroactive priming. Retroactive priming indicates an interdependency between prime and target processing that needs to be incorporated into models of semantic priming.     

Automatic processes in lexical access and spreading activation.

The semantic priming effect can be reduced or eliminated depending on how the prime word is processed. The experiments reported here investigate this prime task effect. Two experiments used identity and semantic priming tasks to determine whether the prime word is encoded at a lexical level under letter-search conditions. When the prime task was naming, both identity and semantic priming occurred; however, when a letter-search task was performed on the prime word, only identity priming occurred, thus supporting the argument that the search task affects activation of semantic associates rather than lexical access of the prime word. Another experiment demonstrated that this identity priming was the result of lexical processes rather than of letter-by-letter priming. A cross-modal priming technique demonstrated that the letter-search prime task does not actively suppress activation of semantic associates. The implications of these results for automaticity and for proposed mechanisms of priming are discussed.     

The nature of the mental representation of radicals in Chinese: a priming study

Using a priming procedure, 4 experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of a short preexposure of a prime that was a radical or contained radicals identical to the target. Significant facilitation was found when the target contained the prime as a radical, although only for low-frequency targets which did not arise merely as a result of graphical similarity. Facilitation also occurred when the prime and target shared a radical in the same position but not when in different positions. When the prime and target had exactly the same radicals but in different positions, however, the priming effect was inhibitory. This set of results suggests that simple characters (radicals) and complex characters are represented at a different level.     

Levels and speed of processing effects on word analysis

Previous work on semantic priming effects has suggested that priming is contingent upon semantic analysis of the prime stimulus. In the present series of experiments, subjects in Grade 3, Grade 6, and college performed variants of a priming task in which semantic (lexical decision) as well as fast (case judgment) and slow (letter search) nonsemantic levels of processing were required for both prime and target stimuli. Contrary to a levels of processing hypothesis, context effects were not simple functions of the level at which the prime was processed. Priming effects were found with a slow nonsemantic prime task (letter search), but generally not with a fast nonsemantic analysis of the prime (case judgment). The form of the priming effect when the prime was processed semantically by a lexical decision depended on the relationship between prime and target processing: a switch from semantic prime processing to nonsemantic target processing produced Stroop-like interference, with other combinations of prime and target processing producing facilitation. By using a series of discrimination, focusing, and classification tasks in a Garner (1978) paradigm, it was possible to determine how subjects were processing the semantic and nonsemantic dimensions, and these perceptual strategies were compared across educational levels to account for the priming effects. Our results suggest that context effects need to be understood in terms of the speeds of processing of different codes of information inherent in words.     

启动刺激含有多个靶子条件下的负启动效应

采用数字命名任务,在通常的负启动范式基础上增加启动刺激靶子数目．进行了两个实验。实验一发现,当启动刺激靶子个数为1个和2个时。出现负启动效应;当启动刺激靶子个数为3个和4个时。则不出现负启动效应。这提示靶子所获注意资源数量的作用。实验二发现．当启动刺激有2个和3个靶子时．如果未被选择来反应的靶子成为探测刺激的靶子,其反应时与控制组无显著差异。即不出现负启动。这表明在启动刺激中未被选择来反应的靶子与干扰项所受到的加工是有差别的。     

Orthographic rime priming

Three experiments are described, each using a partial priming technique in which a target word was briefly preceded by a masked trigram. The relative strength of priming effects was assessed by comparing the difference in target word naming times between unprimed and primed trials in different priming conditions. Experiment 1 replicated previous work in demonstrating stronger priming when the target word was primed by the orthographic rime than when the prime constituted otherwise comparable word-final trigrams that do not constitute orthographic rimes. Experiment 2 compared orthographic, phonological rime, and control primes. Only orthographic rime primes reliably increased target word naming speed, although the priming effect was less selective with longer prime durations. In Experiment 3 priming was observed for both orthographic rime and phonological rime primes shown for 150 msec. However, stronger priming was observed with orthographic rime primes. These experiments demonstrate that orthographic rime priming effects do not simply reflect the activation of an intact subunit of the target word articulation program.     

Components of activation: repetition and priming effects in lexical decision and recognition

Activation decay functions were examined in two different tasks: lexical decision and word recognition. Activation (amount of facilitation) was measured both for item repetition and for priming between newly learned associates. Results indicate that there are at least three different components of activation: a short-term component that decays with one or two intervening items and that appears to be common to priming and repetition; an intermediate component for repetition in recognition; and a long-term component for repetition.     

On obtaining episodic priming in a lexical decision task following paired-associate learning

In four experiments, subjects made lexical (word-nonword) decisions to target letter strings after studying paired associates. In this lexical decision test, word targets previously studied as response terms in the paired associates were preceded at a 150-ms and/or 950-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) by one of various subsets of the following six types of primes: a neutral (XXX or ready) prime, a semantically unrelated word prime episodically related to the target through its having been previously studied in the same pair, a semantically related word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, a semantically unrelated word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, a nonstudied semantically related word prime, and a nonstudied semantically unrelated word prime. At the 950-ms SOA, facilitation of lexical decisions produced by the episodically related primes was greater in test lists in which there were no 150-ms SOA trials intermixed, no previously studied semantically related primes, and no studied nonword targets. At the 150-ms SOA, facilitation from episodic priming was greater in test lists in which there were no semantically related primes and all studied word targets and no studied nonword targets. Facilitation effects from semantically related primes were small in magnitude and occurred inconsistently. Discussion focused on the implications these results have for the episodic-semantic memory distinction and the automaticity of episodic and semantic priming effects.     

Novel word integration in the mental lexicon: Evidence from unmasked and masked semantic priming

We sought to establish whether novel words can become integrated into existing semantic networks by teaching participants new meaningful words and then using these new words as primes in two semantic priming experiments, in which participants carried out a lexical decision task to familiar words. Importantly, at no point in training did the novel words co-occur with the familiar words that served as targets in the primed lexical decision task, allowing us to evaluate semantic priming in the absence of direct association. We found that familiar words were primed by the newly related novel words, both when the novel word prime was unmasked (Experiment 1) and when it was masked (Experiment 2), suggesting that the new words had been integrated into semantic memory. Furthermore, this integration was strongest after a 1-week delay and was independent of explicit recall of the novel word meanings: Forgetting of meanings did not attenuate priming. We argue that even after brief training, newly learned words become an integrated part of the adult mental lexicon rather than being episodically represented separately from the lexicon.     

Lexical processing of ambiguous words: dominance or associative strength?

Four experiments examined the role of meaning frequency (dominance) and associative strength (measured by associative norms) in the processing of ambiguous words in isolation. Participants made lexical decisions to targets words that were associates of the more frequent (dominant) or less frequent (subordinate) meaning of a homograph prime. The first two experiments investigated the role of associative strength at long SOAs (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony) (750 ms.), showing that meaning is facilitated by the targets' associative strength and not by their dominance. The last two experiments traced the role associative strength at short SOAs (250 ms), showing that the manipulation of the associative strength has no effect in the semantic priming. The conclusions are: on the one hand, semantic priming for homographs is due to associative strength manipulations at long SOAs. On the other hand, the manipulation of the associative strength has no effect when automatic processes (short SOAs) are engaged for homographs.     

Effects of age of acquisition and priming on picture naming

Four experiments examined the interaction of age of acquisition (AoA) and priming on picture naming. Experiment 1 found that initial-letter priming and AoA significantly affected picture-naming latencies, but there was no interaction between them. Experiment 2 found that initial-phoneme priming and AoA significantly affected picture-naming latencies, but again there was no interaction. Experiment 3 repeated Barry, Hirsh, Johnston, and Williams's (2001) priming study using a very short interval between prime and target. Experiment 3 replicated previous findings of a significant interaction between priming and AoA. Experiment 4 repeated this investigation with a procedure that did not require participants to articulate the prime. Once again, there were significant effects of priming, AoA, and the interaction between them. The implications of these findings in relation to accounts of AoA and its locus of effect are discussed.     

Effects of age of acquisition and priming on picture naming

Four experiments examined the interaction of age of acquisition (AoA) and priming on picture naming. Experiment 1 found that initial-letter priming and AoA significantly affected picture-naming latencies, but there was no interaction between them. Experiment 2 found that initial-phoneme priming and AoA significantly affected picture-naming latencies, but again there was no interaction. Experiment 3 repeated Barry, Hirsh, Johnston, and Williams's (2001) priming study using a very short interval between prime and target. Experiment 3 replicated previous findings of a significant interaction between priming and AoA. Experiment 4 repeated this investigation with a procedure that did not require participants to articulate the prime. Once again, there were significant effects of priming, AoA, and the interaction between them. The implications of these findings in relation to accounts of AoA and its locus of effect are discussed.     

The role of selection in generating auditory negative priming

The importance of selecting between a target and a distractor in producing auditory negative priming was examined in three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a prime pair of sounds, followed by a probe pair of sounds. For each pair, listeners were to identify the sound presented to the left ear. Under these conditions, participants were especially slow to identify a sound in the probe pair if it had been ignored in the preceding prime pair. Evidence of auditory negative priming was also apparent when the prime sound was presented in isolation to only one ear (Experiment 2) and when the probe target was presented in isolation to one ear (Experiment 3). In addition, the magnitude of the negative priming effect was increased substantially when only a single prime sound was presented. These results suggest that the emergence of auditory negative priming does not depend on selection between simultaneous target and distractor sounds.     

Interference and negative priming from ignored distractors: The role of selection difficulty

The relation between distractor interference and negative priming from identical distractors was examined in two experiments. Subjects responded to a target letter, which was indicated by an adjacent bar marker, and attempted to ignore a distracting letter. Onprime trials, distracting letters were either compatible or incompatible with the target, allowing for a measure of interference. On subsequentprobe trials, previously ignored distractors were sometimes presented as targets, allowing for a measure of negative priming. Reducing the spatial separation between targets and distractors on the prime trial increased the magnitude of interferenceand negative priming, but these effects appeared to be independent of each other (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, the prime target location was precued on some trials, but not on others. Precuing attenuated the magnitude of interference, but not that of negative priming effects. This pattern indicates that measures of negative priming and measures of distractor interference on the immediately preceding trial are independent. The results are discussed in terms of a selective inhibition model of selective attention.     

Conceptual combinations and relational contexts in free association and in priming in lexical decision and naming

Words known to have strong associates of a particular relational type were embedded in lists of other words with relations of the same type or in lists of words with relations of a different type (e.g.close-far in a list of other opposite pairs or in a list of synonym pairs). In free association, the probability of a response consistent with the relational context was higher than the probability of a response inconsistent with the context. In lexical decision and naming, significant priming was obtained for related pairs of words only when their relation was consistent with the relational context of the list in which they were embedded. The priming effects were obtained when the stimulus onset asynchrony between prime and target words was short (250 msec for lexical decision and 300 msec for naming), indicating that the effects were due to automatic retrieval processes. These findings point to the importance of the particular relations between words in the retrieval of information from memory, an aspect of processing overlooked by current memory models.