Semantic processing in visual word recognition: activation blocking and domain specificity

Lexical decision to a target is typically facilitated when a related prime is simply read, but is typically eliminated if subjects carry out a letter search on the prime when probe and prime appear simultaneously. Three experiments involving the addition of a task-irrelevant word to this prime search paradigm address (1) Stolz and Besner’s (1996, 1998) account in which semantic priming is eliminated because letter search on the prime instantiates an activation block between lexical and semantic levels of representation, (2) Chiappe, Smith, and Besner’s (1996) account that activation blocking is domain specific, and (3) Neely and Kahan’s (2001) claim that semantic activation is context independent and capacity free. The results are (1) consistent with the account that activation blocking is general to a level, rather than item specific, (2) consistent with the account that activation blocking is domain specific, and (3) inconsistentwith the claim that semantic activation is context independent and capacity free.