Influence of Religion on Prosociality: A Priming Study of Buddhist Concepts among Nonbelievers in China

ABSTRACT

From a theoretical perspective, there is consensus that religion is positively associated with prosocial behaviors. However, rather little is known about whether religion can increase the accessibility of prosocial concepts among nonbelievers. In the current study, we explored the influence of religion on the accessibility of such concepts among nonbelievers of Buddhism using supraliminal and subliminal priming techniques. Specifically, we employed 20 each of Buddhist and neutral words as priming stimuli, along with 20 each of prosocial and antisocial words as target stimuli. Participants were asked to determine, as quickly and as accurately as possible, if a presented word had a prosocial or antisocial meaning. In Study 1, participants were supraliminally primed (200 ms) with Buddhist words. The results showed that participants recognized prosocial words more quickly than they did antisocial words when primed with Buddhist words than with neutral words. In Study 2, we used subliminal priming (38 ms), and obtained the same results as in Study 1. Taken together, the results suggest that Buddhist concepts, whether primed explicitly or implicitly, increased the mental accessibility of prosocial concepts.     

The distinctiveness of emotion concepts: a comparison between emotion, abstract, and concrete words

Are the concepts represented by emotion words different from abstract words in memory? We examined the distinct characteristics of emotion concepts in 3 separate experiments. The first demonstrated that emotion words are better recalled than both concrete and abstract words in a free recall task. In the second experiment, ratings of abstract, concrete, and emotion words were compared on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. Results revealed a difference between all 3 word types on each of the 3 scales. The third experiment investigated priming in a lexical decision task for homogeneous (abstract-abstract and emotion-emotion) and heterogeneous (abstract-emotion and emotion-abstract) associated word pairs. Priming occurred only for the homogeneous and heterogeneous abstract-emotion word pair conditions. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in terms of the circumplex, hierarchical, and semantic activation models. The results are most consistent with the predictions of the semantic activation model.     

Unconscious semantic priming in the absence of partial awareness

In a recent paper in Psychological Science, Kouider and Dupoux reported obtaining unconscious Stroop priming only when subjects had partial awareness of the masked distractor words (i.e., could consciously perceive subword features that enabled reconstruction of whole words). Kouider and Dupoux conjectured that semantic priming occurs only when such partial awareness is present. The present experiments tested this conjecture in an affective categorization priming task that differed from Kouider and Dupoux’s in using masked distractors that subjects had practiced earlier as visible words. Experiment 1 showed priming from practiced words when subjects had no partial awareness of those words. Experiment 2 showed that, in the absence of partial awareness, practiced words yielded priming but not-practiced words did not. Experiment 3 corroborated Experiment 1 and 2s results using a different test of partial awareness. These results suggest that unconscious processing (rather than partial awareness) of subword elements drives masked semantic priming by practiced words.     

Components of the between-language semantic priming effect

Abstract

The robustness of the between-language semantic priming effect was investigated in two experiments. In the first, we found that the effect is not affected by language expectation in a lexical decision task. In the second experiment, a reliable between-language effect was obtained when the subjects had to pronounce the target. For both experiments, there was equal between- and within-language semantic priming which was insensitive to SO A. The results suggest the effects of prime-language and target-language on semantic priming are additive, and are consistent with the amodal representation of concepts.     

False memories for script actions in a mugging account

Abstract

A number of cross-language priming experiments are reported that evaluate whether word meanings in the first and second language are represented in common or separate systems. A masked priming procedure was used on the assumption that when prime awareness is limited, any priming effects directly reveal the underlying structure of the semantic system. Primes were presented in the subjects' first language, while targets were in their second language. Priming effects were obtained for word pairs that were semantically highly similar but not translation equivalents, for example fence-haie (= hedge in French), suggesting that words in the two languages share common elements of semantic code. Priming was also obtained between translation equivalents which, in conjunction with the results for semantically similar pairs, is most naturally interpreted in terms of partially shared semantic representations. However, no masked priming effects were obtained between associated pairs of relatively low semantic similarity, for example shoe-pied (= foot in French), whereas such pairs did produce an effect when primes were unmasked. The results are discussed in terms of limitations on the semantic activation produced by masked words, and the role of collocational relationships in priming between associated words in the same language.     

The right hemisphere maintains solution-related activation for yet-to-be-solved problems

In five experiments, we examined the time course of hemispheric differences in solution activation for insight-like problems. We propose that solving insight problems requires retrieval of unusual interpretations of problem elements, and that right-hemisphere (RH) coarse semantic coding is more likely than left-hemisphere (LH) fine semantic coding to maintain semantic activation of such interpretations. In four experiments, participants attempted word problems for 7 sec (Experiments 1A and 1B) or 2 sec (Experiments 2A and 2B), and 750 msec later responded to lateralized target words. After 7 sec of solving effort, Experiment 1A participants showed greater solution-related priming (i.e., they named solutions faster than unrelated words) for left visual field-RH (lvf-RH) targets than for right visual field-LH (rvf-LH) targets, and Experiment 1B participants made faster solution decisions on target words presented to the RH, as previously demonstrated following 15 sec of effort. After 2 sec of solving effort in Experiment 2A, women showed symmetric solution-related priming, although men showed a slight lvf-RH advantage in priming; and in Experiment 2B participants made equally quick solution decisions for targets presented to the LH and to the RH. In Experiment 3, participants viewed the problems for 1,250 msec then named lateralized target words; they showed symmetric solution-related priming. These experiments demonstrate solution activation initially in both hemispheres, but maintained solution activation only in the RH.     

Are coffee and toffee served in a cup? Ortho-phonologically mediated associative priming

We report three masked associative priming experiments with the lexical decision task that explore whether the initial activation flow of a visually presented word activates the semantic representations of that word's orthographic/phonological neighbours. The predictions of cascades and serial/modular models of lexical processing differ widely in this respect. Using a masked priming paradigm (stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA = 50 ms), words preceded by ortho-phonologically mediated associated “neighbours” (oveja–MIEL, the Spanish for sheep–HONEY; note that oveja is a phonological neighbour of abeja, the Spanish for bee) were recognized more rapidly than words preceded by an unrelated word prime (Experiments 1 and 3). Furthermore, the magnitude of the ortho-phonologically mediated priming effect (oveja–MIEL) was similar to the magnitude of the associative priming effect (abeja–MIEL). With visible primes and a 250-ms SOA, only the directly associated words showed a priming effect (Experiment 2). These findings pose some problems for a modular account and are more easily interpreted in terms of cascaded models.     

Affective Priming of Alcohol Schema in Coping and Enhancement Motivated Drinkers

This study investigated whether Coping Motivated and Enhancement Motivated drinkers differ in their degree of semantic activation of alcohol concepts on a primed Stroop colour-naming task following exposure to negative and positive affect primes, respectively. Participants were 48 undergraduates (not necessarily problem drinkers) who had elevated scores on the Coping Motivated or Enhancement Motivated subscale of the Drinking Motives Questionnaire - Revised. The Stroop task involved negative, positive and neutral primes that preceded alcohol and no-alcohol target words. As hypothesized, Coping Motivated drinkers showed semantic activation of alcohol concepts following exposure to negative but not neutral primes. Also as hypothesized, Enhancement Motivated drinkers showed semantic activation of alcohol concepts following exposure to positive but not negative primes. Unexpectedly, semantic activation of alcohol concepts was also observed among Coping Motivated drinkers following positive primes and among Enhancement Motivated drinkers following neutral primes. Theoretical implications are discussed, as are implications for improving cognitive behavioral interventions for problem drinkers.     

Word recognition across orthographies: Another look at the interaction between context and degradation

Abstract

The performance of English and Spanish subjects was examined in two experiments using a lexical decision task in which the effects of semantic priming and stimulus degradation were systematically varied. The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis predicts that priming and degradation will interact in the orthographically “deep” language (English) but not in the “shallow” one (Spanish). In the first experiment, the two factors were found to interact in a similar way in both English and Spanish groups. In the second experiment, in which only Spanish subjects participated, the interaction was again present but only in those subjects who showed an overall facilitation effect on primed words. The results are consistent with the use of the so-called “direct” route in Spanish and are at variance with other previous findings which have suggested that reading in shallow orthographies occurs via the “indirect” phonological route. There was also evidence that nonword rejection times were slower in Spanish subjects and that the performance of the two groups was affected differently by the different types of neutral baseline primes (asterisks or unrelated words). Possible interpretations of these performance variations are briefly discussed.     

The affective priming effect: Automatic activation of evaluative information in memory

Abstract

Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) argued that affect may be activated automatically from memory on the mere observation of an affect-loaded stimulus. Using a variant of the standard sequential priming paradigm, it was demonstrated that the time needed to evaluate target words as positive or negative decreased if they were preceded by a similarly valenced prime word, but increased when preceded by a prime of opposite valence. Several aspects of their procedure, however, do not warrant their conclusion concerning the unconditionality of the effect. The present research investigated the generality of this affective priming effect. In Experiment 1, it was tested whether the effect can be generalised to more complex visual material. Stimulus pairs consisted of colour slides. Subjects had to evaluate the targets as quickly as possible. In Experiment 2, the standard word-word procedure was used, but target words had to be pronounced. In both experiments, significant affective priming effects were observed, supporting Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, and Pratto's (1992) assertion that the automatic activation effect is a pervasive and relative unconditional phenomenon. Implications for theories of affect and emotion are discussed.     

The spatial mapping of concepts in English and Mandarin

ABSTRACT

English speakers have been shown to map abstract concepts in space, which occurs on both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. For example, words such as God are associated with up and right spatial locations, and words such as Satan with down and left. If the tendency to map concepts in space is a universal property of human cognition, then it is likely that such mappings may be at least partly culturally-specific, since many concepts are themselves language-specific and therefore cultural conventions. Here we investigated whether Mandarin speakers report spatial mapping of concepts, and how these mappings compare with English speakers (i.e. are words with the same meaning associated with the same spatial locations). Across two studies, results showed that both native English and Mandarin speakers reported spatial mapping of concepts, and that the distribution of mappings was highly similar for the two groups. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Implicit memory for phonological processes in visual stem completion

Four experiments were conducted investigating the role of phonology in repetition priming. Experiment 1 used a cross-modal priming paradigm in which participants made semantic judgments about spoken words and then performed a visual stem completion task. In Experiments 2–4, both the primes and the test stems were presented visually. The results of the first three experiments revealed that priming transfers across interpretations of a homophone. That is, seeing or hearingweek primes bothweek andweak. The results of Experiment 4 showed that homophone priming cannot be attributed to the orthographic similarity of homophonic words. Together, these results indicate that repetition priming on a visual word completion task includes a phonological component.     

With a letter-searched prime, boat primes float but swim and coat don't: further evidence for automatic semantic activation

Letter search (LS) on the prime typically eliminates semantic priming (swim-float) and orthographic/phonological (O/P) priming (coat-float) but not morphological priming (marked-mark). However, LS on the prime does not reduce semantic priming for low-frequency targets (Tse & Neely, 2007). These findings suggest that semantic activation survives LS but decays during LS to a low level that can be detected only with sensitive measures, which are afforded by low-frequency targets and morphologically related primes and targets. In the present research, we show that LS on the prime results in 0 msec of semantic priming (e.g., swim-float) and 11 msec of O/P priming (e.g., coat-float), both of which are statistically null, whereas the LS semantic+O/P priming effect for primes and targets that do not share a morpheme (e.g., boat-float) is a robust 37 msec. Discussion focuses on the automaticity of semantic activation and whether morphological priming is mediated by (1) a morphemic representation that is separate from semantic representations or (2) activation combined from semantics and orthography/phonology.     

Analogical priming via semantic relations

Research on semantic memory has often tacitly treated semantic relations as simple conduits for spreading activation between associated object concepts, rather than as integral components of semantic organization. Yet conceptual relations, and the role bindings they impose on the objects they relate, are central to such cognitive tasks as discourse comprehension, inference, problem solving, and analogical reasoning. The present study addresses the question of whether semantic relations and their bindings can influence access to semantic memory. The experiments investigated whether, and under what conditions, presenting a prime pair of words linked by 1 of 10 common semantic relations would facilitate processing of a target pair of words linked by the same relation. No effect was observed when participants merely read the prime; however, relational priming was observed under instructions to note and use the semantic relations. Participants were faster at making a lexical decision or naming a word on a related pair of target words when that pair was primed with an analogously related pair of words than when the prime pair consisted of either two unrelated words or two words linked by some other relation. This evidence of analogical priming suggests that under an appropriate strategic set, lexical decisions and naming latencies can be influenced by a process akin to analogical mapping.     

Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings

The present study investigated cross-language priming effects with unique noncognate translation pairs. Unbalanced Dutch (first language [L1])-English (second language [L2]) bilinguals performed a lexical decision task in a masked priming paradigm. The results of two experiments showed significant translation priming from L1 to L2 (meisje-GIRL) and from L2 to L1 (girl-MEISJE), using two different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) (250 and 100 msec). Although translation priming from L1 to L2 was significantly stronger than priming from L2 to L1, the latter was significant as well. Two further experiments with the same word targets showed significant cross-language semantic priming in both directions ( jongen [boy]-GIRL; boy-MEISJE [GIRL]) and for both SOAs. These data suggest that L1 and L2 are represented by means of a similar lexico-semantic architecture in which L2 words are also able to rapidly activate semantic information, although to a lesser extent than L1 words are able to. This is consistent with models assuming quantitative rather than qualitative differences between L1 and L2 representations.     

Subliminal words activate semantic categories (not automated motor responses)

Semantic priming by visually masked, unidentifiable (“subliminal”) words occurs robustly when the words appearing as masked primes have been classified earlier in practice as visible targets. It has been argued (Damian, 2001) that practice enables robust subliminal priming by automatizing learned associations between words and the specific motor responses used to classify them. Two experiments demonstrate that, instead, the associations formed in practice that underlie subliminal priming are between words and semantic categories. Visible words classified aspleasant or unpleasant in practice with one set of response key assignments functioned later as subliminal primes with appropriate valence, even when associations of keys with valences were reversed before the test. This result shows that subliminal priming involves unconscious categorization of the prime, rather than just the automatic activation of a practiced stimulus-response mapping.     

Semantic priming effects on picture and word processing

The effects of semantic priming on picture and word processing were assessed under conditions in which subjects were required simply to identify stimuli (label pictures or read words) as rapidly as possible. Stimuli were presented in pairs (a prime followed by a target), with half of the pairs containing members of the same semantic category and half containing unrelated concepts. Semantic relatedness was found to facilitate the identification of both pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2), and obtained interactions of semantic relatedness and stimulus quality in both experiments suggested that semantic priming affects the initial encoding of both types of stimuli. In Experiment 3, subjects received pairs of pictures, pairs of words, and mixed pairs composed of a picture and a word or of a word and a picture. Significant priming effects were obtained on mixed as well as unmixed pairs, supporting the assumption that pictures and words access semantic information from a common semantic store. Of primary interest was the significantly greater priming obtained in picture-picture pairs than in word-word or mixed pairs. This suggests that, in addition to priming that is mediated by the semantic system, priming may occur in picture-picture pairs that results from the overlap in visual features common to the pictorial representations of objects from the same semantic category.     

Perceptual and conceptual priming in a semantic reprocessing task

Two experiments are reported that addressed the relative involvement and nature of perceptual and conceptual priming in a semantically complex task. Both experiments investigated facilitation from repeated semantic comparison trials in which subjects decided whether two words had the same meaning (e.g.,moist damp). The first experiment compared the magnitude and persistence of perceptual and conceptual priming components. Perceptual priming effects were modest, and contrary to some previous evidence, they did not appear to be more persistent than nonperceptual priming effects. The second experiment investigated the memory processes involved when perceptual priming was eliminated through a modality change between prime and target trials. Evidence suggested that conceptual priming primarily involved memory for the meaning comparison processes rather than better access to existing memory for the stimulus words.     

Speed of Lexical Activation in Nonfluent Broca''s Aphasia and Fluent Wernicke''s Aphasia

Rapid, automatic access to lexical/semantic knowledge is critical in supporting the tight temporal constraints of on-line sentence comprehension. Based on findings of “abnormal” lexical priming in nonfluent aphasics, the question of disrupted automatic lexical activation has been the focus of many recent efforts to understand their impaired sentence comprehension capabilities. The picture that emerges from this literature is, however, unclear. Nonfluent Broca's aphasic patients showinconsistent,notabsent,lexical priming, and there is little consensus about the conditions under which they do and do not prime. The most parsimonious explanation for the variable findings from priming studies to date is that the primary disturbance in Broca's lexical activation has something to do withspeedof activation. Broca's aphasic patients prime when sufficient time is allowed for activation to spread among associates. To examine this “slowed activation” hypothesis, the time course of lexical activation was examined using a list priming paradigm. Temporal delays between successive words ranged from 300 to 2100 msec. One nonfluent Broca's aphasic patient and one fluent Wernicke's patient were tested. Both patients displayed abnormal priming patterns, though of different sorts. In contrast to elderly subjects, who prime at relatively short interstimulus intervals (ISIs) beginning at 500 msec, the Broca's aphasic subject showed reliable automatic priming but only at a long ISI of 1500 msec. That is, this subject retained the ability to access lexical information automatically if allowed sufficient time to do so, a finding that may help explain disrupted comprehension of normally rapid conversational speech. The Wernicke's aphasic subject, in contrast, showed normally rapid initial activation but continued to show priming over an abnormally long range of delays, from 300 msec through 1100 msec. This protracted priming suggests failure to dampen activation and might explain the semantic confusion exhibited by fluent Wernicke's patients.     

纳西象形文字识别中的形、音、义激活

对纳西象形文字识别中的形、音、义激活进行了考察。实验1采用色词干扰的实验范式。结果表明,纳西象形文字的字形比字音和语义更易被激活。命名颜色字的形似字的颜色比命名颜色字的音同或音似字、语义联想字的颜色快。实验2采用色词干扰实验范式的变式。结果表明,当SOA=100ms时,颜色字及其形似字对颜色块命名的启动效应显著。当SOA为200ms和400ms时,颜色字的语义联想字对颜色块命名的启动效应显著。整个研究表明,在纳西象形文字识别中,字形信息首先被激活,其次是语义,字音的激活不明显。纳西象形文字的识别符合直通假设。所以如此,与纳西象形文字的特点有关