Primed lexical decision: Combined effects of the proportion of related prime-target pairs and the stimulus-onset asynchrony of prime and target

Lexical decisions to word targets preceded by associatively related word primes are generally faster than those to words following neutral primes, whereas, under certain circumstances, lexical decisions to words preceded by unassociated word primes are slower than those to words following neutral primes. An experiment is reported that investigates the influence of the proportion of related prime-target pairs in the set of materials and of the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) of prime and target on these associative priming effects. Four levels of proportion and three levels of SOA are systematically varied. Both variables are found to affect the size of the associative priming effects. Furthermore, the data suggest interdependence between them. The magnitude of priming only varies with SOA if the proportion of related pairs is relatively large. In contrast, the amount of priming varies with proportion under all SOA conditions. The data are interpreted primarily in terms of two contextual processes, viz., “prime-induced attentional processing” and “post-lexical coherence checking”.     

Grammatical Priming of Visual Word Recognition in Fourth grade Children

Previous work examining context effects in children has been limited to semantic context. The current research examined the effects of grammatical priming of word-naming in fourth-grade children. In Experiment 1, children named both inflected and uninflected noun and verb target words faster when they were preceded by grammatically constraining primes than when they were preceded by neutral primes. Experiment 1 used a long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) interval of 750 msec. Experiment 2 replicated the grammatical priming effect at two SOA intervals (400 msec and 700 msec), suggesting that the grammatical priming effect does not reflect the operation of any gross strategic effects directly attributable to the long SOA interval employed in Experiment 1. Grammatical context appears to facilitate target word naming by constraining target word class. Further work is required to elucidate the loci of this effect.     

Perception without awareness: further evidence from a Stroop priming task

In the present research, we examined the influence of prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) on Stroop-priming effects from masked words. Participants indicated the color of a central target, which was preceded by a 33-msec prime word followed either immediately or after a variable delay by a pattern mask. The prime word was incongruent or congruent with the target color on 75% and 25% of the trials, respectively. The words followed by an immediate mask produced reliable Stroop interference at SOAs of 300 and 400 msec but not at SOAs of 500 and 700 msec. The words followed by a delayed mask produced a reversed (i.e., facilitatory) Stroop effect, which reached significance at an SOA of 400 msec or longer, but never at the shorter 300-msec SOA. Such an differential time course of both types of Stroop priming effects provides further evidence for the existence of qualitative differences between conscious and nonconscious perceptual processes.     

Doesconal prime canal more thancinal? Masked phonological priming effects in Spanish with the lexical decision task

Evidence for an early involvement of phonology in word identification usually relies on the comparison between a target word preceded by a homophonic prime and an orthographic control (rait-RATE vs. raut-RATE). This comparison rests on the assumption that the two control primes are equally orthographically similar to the target. Here, we tested for phonological effects with a masked priming paradigm in which orthographic similarity between priming conditions was perfectly controlled at the letter level and in which identification of the prime was virtually at chance for both stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) (66 and 50 msec). In the key prime-target pairs, each prime differed from the target by one vowel letter, but one changed the sound of the initial c, and the other did not (cinal-CANAL vs. conal-CANAL). In the control prime-target pairs, the primes had the identical vowel manipulation, but neither changed the initial consonant sound (pinel-PANEL vs. ponel-PANEL). For both high- and low-frequency words, lexical decision responses to the target were slower when the prime changed the sound of the c than when it did not, whereas there was no difference for the controls at both SOAs. However, this phonological effect was small and was not significant when the SOA was 50 msec. The pattern of data is consistent with an early phonological coding of primes that occurs just a little later than orthographic coding.     

Retroactive semantic priming in a lexical decision task

The present study reports two experiments that required subjects to name target items preceded by a masked prime. Additionally, and subsequent to the naming task, subjects were required to indicate whether or not the prime was a word, along with a confidence rating of their lexical decision. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the processing of masked primes is facilitated by related targets when such targets are presented either 100 or 200 msec after the onset of the prime. Experiment 2 extends the finding of “retroactive” priming to a 1000=msec separation in prime-target presentation (SOA). The extent of retroactive priming is not dependent on SOA between prime and target, nor is it affected by the prime-mask SOA, which varied from 10 to 180 msec. Priming of targets was also independent of prime-target and prime-mask SOA, providing that primes had been classified as words. For word primes classified as non-words there was no semantic priming on target naming reaction time. Implications of these findings with respect to the nature of retroactive priming and the current controversy concerning subliminal priming effects were discussed.     

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.     

Semantic Processing of Foveally and Parafoveally Presented Words in a Lexical Decision Task

Using a lexical decision task in which two primes appeared simultaneously in the visual field for 150 msec followed by a target word, two experiments examined semantic priming from attended and unattended primes as a function of both the separation between the primes in the visual field and the prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). In the first experiment significant priming effects were found for both the attended and unattended prime words, though the effect was much greater for the attended words. In addition, and also for both attention conditions, priming showed a tendency to increase with increasing eccentricity (2.3°, 3.3°, and 4.3°) between the prime words in the visual field at the long (550 and 850 msec) but not at the short (250 msec) prime-target SOA. In the second experiment the prime stimuli were either two words (W-W) or one word and five Xs (W-X). We manipulated the degree of eccentricity (2° and 3.6°) between the prime stimuli and used a prime-target SOA of 850 msec. Again significant priming was found for both the attended and unattended words but only the W-W condition showed a decrement in priming as a function of the separation between the primes; this decrement came to produce negative priming for the unattended word at the narrow (2°) separation. These results are discussed in relation to the semantic processing of parafoveal words and the inhibitory effects of focused attention.     

Phonological and conceptual activation in speech comprehension

We propose that speech comprehension involves the activation of token representations of the phonological forms of current lexical hypotheses, separately from the ongoing construction of a conceptual interpretation of the current utterance. In a series of cross-modal priming experiments, facilitation of lexical decision responses to visual target words (e.g., time) was found for targets that were semantic associates of auditory prime words (e.g., date) when the primes were isolated words, but not when the same primes appeared in sentence contexts. Identity priming (e.g., faster lexical decisions to visual date after spoken date than after an unrelated prime) appeared, however, both with isolated primes and with primes in prosodically neutral sentences. Associative priming in sentence contexts only emerged when sentence prosody involved contrastive accents, or when sentences were terminated immediately after the prime. Associative priming is therefore not an automatic consequence of speech processing. In no experiment was there associative priming from embedded words (e.g., sedate-time), but there was inhibitory identity priming (e.g., sedate-date) from embedded primes in sentence contexts. Speech comprehension therefore appears to involve separate distinct activation both of token phonological word representations and of conceptual word representations. Furthermore, both of these types of representation are distinct from the long-term memory representations of word form and meaning.     

Identity primes produce facilitation in a colour naming task

Five experiments examined associative or identity priming effects in a colour-naming task with colour-neutral words. In Experiment 1, subjects instructed to read the prime silently showed no associative priming effect but a colour-naming facilitation with identity priming. In Experiment 2, the typical associative priming interference in colour naming was demonstrated in subjects recalling the prime word, but not in subjects reading the prime silently, whereas associative primes facilitated word naming regardless of the prime response requirement. The remaining studies investigated the colour-naming facilitation observed with identity primes. Experiment 3 showed no effects on the facilitation of colour naming from varying the letter case of a silently read prime. Experiment 4 showed facilitation when subjects recalled the prime, and a target frequency effect, with faster colour-naming latencies for high- and medium- than low-frequency targets. In Experiment 5, there was no facilitation for naming the colour of target words paired with non-word primes differing in their initial letter from the target. Taken together, the results suggest that the facilitation of colour naming following identical primes reflects faster target word recognition, whereas the associative priming interference reflects an attentional effect.     

Semantic aspects of morphological processing: transparency effects in Serbian

We examined the contribution of semantics to morphological facilitation in the visual lexical decision task at two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) with Serbian materials. Primes appeared in Roman or Cyrillic characters. Targets always were printed in Roman. When primes were presented at an SOA of 250 msec, decision latencies to verbal targets (e.g., VOLIM) showed greatest facilitation after inflectionally (e.g., VOLE) related primes, significantly less after semantically transparent derived primes (e.g., ZAVOLE), and less again after semantically opaque derived primes (e.g., PREVOLE). Latencies after semantically transparent and opaque derived target words did not differ at an SOA of 48 msec. Both were slower than after inflectionally related primes. Stated generally, effects of semantic transparency among derivationally related verb forms were evident at long SOAs, but not at short ones. Under alphabet-alternating conditions, magnitudes of facilitation were greater overall, but the pattern was similar. The outcome suggests that restricted processing time for the prime limits the contribution of semantics to morphological processing and calls into question accounts that posit a task-invariant semantic criterion for morphological decomposition within the lexicon.     

On the nature of neutral primes in a lexical decision task

Summary Research concerned with semantic priming has used a neutral prime as a benchmark for measuring the amount of facilitation for related targets and the amount of inhibition for unrelated targets. Recently, de Groot, Thomassen, and Hudson (1982) have reported that lexical decisions to targets are faster when preceded by the neutral prime BLANK as compared to a neutral prime consisting of a string of X's. Additionally, Antos (1979) has reported that an X neutral prime induces an inhibitory effect when the stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) is short. The present experiment manipulated class of neutral prime, SOA, and practice. The results failed to support the observation by Antos. However, the results did support the finding by de Groot et al. at shorter SOA's (200 and 550 ms). At a longer (1000 ms) SOA the effect of the two neutral primes as well as the effect of the unrelated primes were equivalent. Practice had no differential effect on either of the neutral primes as compared to the unrelated priming conditions. These results were interpreted to mean that the difference between the two neutral primes at a brief SOA were perceptual in origin and that an unrelated word prime is neutral with respect to the target in the absence of strategic priming effects.     

Masked form priming is moderated by the size of the letter-order-free orthographic neighbourhood

University students made lexical decisions to targets preceded by masked primes. In Experiment 1, transposed-letter primes were used also in the sandwich priming paradigm, in which the target is briefly pre-presented prior to the prime. The priming effects in the masked paradigm, but not in the sandwich paradigm, were moderated by the density of the letter-order-free neighbourhood of the target. In Experiment 2, letter-order-free neighbour prime words produced a priming cost in masked priming. These results are consistent with the idea that sandwich priming attenuates letter-order-free neighbour competition in target identification. Unexpectedly, no priming cost was produced by conventional (letter-position-preserving) word neighbour primes. Order-free neighbours may produce facilitation of target processing less, and more variably, than conventional neighbours.     

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.     

Dissociated backward priming effects in lexical decision and pronunciation tasks

Backward priming was examined at 150- and 500-msec prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) using visually presented primes and targets in lexical decision and pronunciation tasks. Two kinds of backward relations were used: compound items for which targets and primes formed a word in the backward direction (e.g., prime: HOP; target: bell), and noncompound items for which targets and primes did not form a word but were associatively related in the backward but not the forward direction (e.g., prime: BABY; target: stork). Results showed that backward priming effects were equivalent for compounds and noncompounds. However, for lexical decisions, backward priming occurred at both SOAs, whereas for pronunciation, it occurred only at the 150-msec SOA. We discuss how this SOA-dissociated backward priming effect in lexical decision and pronunciation tasks poses a serious challenge for all theories of semantic priming.     

An anxiety-related bias in semantic activation when processing threat/neutral homographs

Three experiments are reported comparing high and low-trait anxious subjects in terms of their patterns of semantic activation in response to ambiguous primes, with one threat-related and one neutral meaning. Such primes were followed by targets related to either their threat or neutral meaning, or by unrelated targets, in a lexical decision task. Experiments 1 to 3 employed stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 750 msec, 500 msec, and 1250 msec, respectively. At 500-msec SOA all subjects showed facilitation for both meanings. At 750-msec SOA the only significant priming effect was that for the threat-related meaning in the high-anxiety group, and a similar trend was found at 1250-msec SOA. Consideration of the patterns of priming for targets following ambiguous threat/neutral primes suggest that at the longer SOAs, high-anxiety subjects consciously “lock on” to a threatening interpretation if one has been made available by earlier automatic spreading activation.     

Priming word recognition with orthographic neighbors: effects of relative prime-target frequency

Four lexical decision experiments were performed with an orthographic priming paradigm in which test words were preceded by orthographically related or unrelated prime words. When prime words were presented for 350 ms without a mask, it was observed that primes that are lower frequency orthographic neighbors of the target interfered with target processing relative to an unrelated condition. When primes were higher frequency neighbors of the target, no interference or facilitation was observed. On the other hand, with briefly presented masked primes, interference was observed with higher frequency prime words. Finally, facilitatory effects in masked repetition priming were obtained with both high- and low-frequency prime-target pairs. The results are interpreted in terms of activation and selection processes operating in visual word recognition.     

Morphological effects in children word reading: A priming study in fourth graders

A growing corpus of evidence suggests that morphology could play a role in reading acquisition, and that young readers could be sensitive to the morphemic structure of written words. In the present experiment, we examined whether and when morphological information is activated in word recognition. French fourth graders made visual lexical decisions to derived words preceded by primes sharing either a morphological or an orthographic relationship with the target. Results showed significant and equivalent facilitation priming effects in cases of morphologically and orthographically related primes at the shortest prime duration, and a significant facilitation priming effect in the case of only morphologically related primes at the longer prime duration. Thus, these results strongly suggest that a morphological level is involved in children's visual word recognition, although it is not distinct from the formal one at an early stage of word processing.     

Semantic priming of familiar faces

A series of experiments to explore the effect of priming by semantically related items in familiarity judgement tasks using faces and names that are analogous to lexical decision tasks is reported. In the first experiment, the semantic priming effect in face recognition reported by Bruce (1983) was explored in more detail by including neutral as well as associated and unrelated primes and by varying the prime-target SOA from 250 to 1,000 msec. Significant facilitation effects, with no inhibition, were found at all three SOAs. To explore the analogy between the processing of faces and verbal materials, a second experiment used names rather than faces. The difference between related and unrelated conditions at 250- and 1,000-msec SOA was similar to that found for faces in Experiment 1, but for names there was some evidence of inhibition. To investigate the locus of the priming effect with faces, in Experiment 3 the effect of degrading face targets was examined. An interaction between stimulus quality and semantic priming was observed, suggesting that the locus of the facilitation might lie at a relatively early stage in face processing. The results of these experiments illustrate further similarities between the processing of faces and verbal materials (cf. Bruce 1979, 1981).     

The facilitation of lexical decisions by a prime occurring after the target

Three experiments are reported that investigate priming effects in a lexical decision task. when the prime was presented after the target. In Experiment 1, the lexical decision target was presented for 50 msec, followed 80 msec later by the prime. No significant facilitation of responses was observed in the related prime condition. In Experiment 2, the target was presented for 30 msec, followed 35 msec later by the prime. Targets followed by related primes were responded to significantly faster than targets with unrelated primes. Experiment 3 replicated the result of Experiment 2. The data are interpreted as supporting parallel processing of the prime and target in semantic priming experiments. The theoretical implications of the “backward” priming effect are discussed.     

Capacity demands of automatic processes in semantic priming

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel In three experiments, we examined the effects of prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and the proportion of related primes and targets (relatedness proportion, or RP) on semantic priming when the prime was either named or was searched for a specific letter. In Experiment 1, with an RP of. 50, priming occurred at SOAs of 240 and 840 msec when the prime was named, but no priming was found at either SOA when the prime was searched for a letter. In Experiment 2 the RP was either. 20 or. 80, and the SOA was set at 1, 700 msec; priming again was found in both conditions when the prime was named, but only in the RP.80 condition when a letter search task was performed on the prime. In Experiment 3, both the proportion of related trials and SOA were varied; as in the previous experiments, no priming effects were found with the letter search task for either SOA in the RP.20 condition, but the priming effect was reinstated in the RP.80 condition. These results are discussed with respect to how limited capacity resources are allocated and how they influence semantic priming effects.