Priming of abstract letter identities in the letter match task

Previous studies of letter recognition have not found priming for abstract letter identities. We used a task that required participants to decide whether a target is the same or different from a reference letter presented in opposite case, which avoids the shortcomings of tasks used in previous studies. We found robust priming effects in this task, which were the same size for letter pairs that have similar visual features across case (e.g., c/C, x/X) and dissimilar features (e.g., a/A, b/B). Also, the pattern of priming was the same whether the prime was in the same or different case as the reference. We take these findings as evidence that abstract letter identities support priming in this task. We suggest that the same-different match task is a useful tool for studying representations used to support masked priming in letter recognition and with other stimuli with limited set size.     

Masked onset priming effect for high-frequency words: further support for the speech-planning account

Two experiments investigated whether priming due to a match in just the onset between a masked prime and target is found with high-frequency target words. Forster and Davis (1991, Exp. 5) reported that the masked onset priming effect was absent for high-frequency words and used the finding to argue that the effect has its locus in the grapheme-phoneme mapping process that operates serially within the nonlexical route. Experiment 1 used primes that were unrelated to targets and found a masked onset priming effect of equal size for high-frequency and low-frequency target words. Experiment 2 used form-related primes as used by Forster and Davis, and again found that the effect of onset mismatch was not dependent on target word frequency. These results are interpreted in terms of an alternative view that the masked onset priming effect has its origin in the process of preparing a speech response.     

Evidence accumulation in the integrated and primed Stroop tasks

We report distributional analyses of response times (RT) in two variants of the color-word Stroop task using manual keypress responses. In the classic Stroop task, in which the color and word dimensions are integrated into a single stimulus, the Stroop congruence effect increased across the quantiles. In contrast, in the primed Stroop task, in which the distractor word is presented ahead of colored symbols, the Stroop congruence effect was manifested solely as a distributional shift, remaining constant across the quantiles. The distributional-shift pattern mirrors the semantic-priming effect that has been reported in semantic categorization tasks. The results are interpreted within the framework of evidence accumulation, and implications for the roles of task conflict and informational conflict are discussed.     

Cross-task strategic effects

When easy and difficult items are mixed together, their reading aloud latencies become more homogeneous relative to their presentation in unmixed ("pure") conditions (Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997). We report two experiments designed to investigate the nature of the mechanism that underlies this list composition, or blocking, effect. In Experiment 1, we replicated Lupker et al.'s (1997) blocking effect in the reading aloud task and extended these findings to the visual lexical decision task. In Experiment 2, we found that blocking effects generalized across tasks: The characteristics of stimuli in a visual lexical decision task influenced reading aloud latencies, and vice versa, when visual lexical decision and reading aloud trials were presented alternately in the same experiment. We discuss implications of these results within time-criterion (Lupker et al., 1997) and strength-of-processing (Kello & Plaut, 2000, 2003) theories of strategic processing in reading.     

Priming and attentional control of lexical and sublexical pathways in naming: a reevaluation

The authors report 3 naming experiments using J. D. Zevin and D. A. Balota's (2000) multiple prime manipulation. They used 2 sets of nonword primes (fast and slow) and low-frequency exception word primes to separate the effects of prime speed from those of prime type. The size of the regularity effect was unaffected by prime type. Relative to the low-frequency exception word prime condition, the frequency effect was reduced in the fast, but not in the slow, nonword prime condition. Lexicality effect size was reduced in both nonword prime conditions, a result consistent with the lexical checking strategy described by S. J. Lupker, P. Brown, and L. Colombo (1997). The authors suggest that these results are better explained in terms of S. J. Lupker et al.'s time-criterion account than J. D. Zevin and D. A. Balota's pathway control hypothesis.     

Two bases of the compatibility effect in the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Four experiments are reported, investigating the mechanisms underlying the compatibility effect in the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). All experiments involved two IATs: flower IAT, in which the target categories were flowers and insects, and number IAT, involving even and odd numbers as target categories. In Experiment 1, using the standard IAT procedure, the two IATs produced equal IAT effects, despite large differences in rated valence contrast between flowers and insects and between even and odd numbers. Experiment 2 used a procedure developed by Klauer and Mierke (2005) and produced results consistent with the view that valence plays a role in the flower IAT but not in the number IAT. Experiments 3 and 4 used manipulations similar to those developed by Rothermund and Wentura (2004) and showed that these manipulations affected the flower IAT and number IAT differently. The results provide converging evidence that the two types of IAT effects-one based on valence and one based on familiarity-are empirically dissociable.Experiments 1and 2 reported in this paper were conducted as an honours project by Marie Peek-O'Leary under the supervision of Sachiko Kinoshita. Parts of this paper were presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society held in Vancouver, Canada, in November, 2003.     

The left-to-right nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming

Two experiments were performed to investigate the nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming, that is, the facilitation in naming latency that is observed when a target shares the initial grapheme/phoneme with a masked prime. Experiment 1 showed that the effect is not due to position-independent letter priming, since the naming of nonword targets preceded by masked primes was facilitated only if the prime shared the initial letter with the target (e.g., suf-SIB) and not if the prime shared the final letter (e.g., mub-SIB). Experiment 2 showed that the effect reflects the sharing of onsets rather than the initial letter, since facilitation due to an overlap of the initial letter was observed only for the simple onset target (e.g., penny-PASTE) for which the letter corresponded to the onset, and not for complex onset targets (e.g., bingo-BLISS). It is argued that the serial nature of the masked onset priming effect is best interpreted as the planning of articulation, rather than as the computation of phonology from orthography.