Levels of processing,context, and the facilitation of pronunciation

This paper examines the nature of processing under semantic and non-semantic orienting instructions. In the experiment subjects were presented with a series of trials; each began with the presentation of a decision word about which they made either a semantic or a non-semantic orienting decision. Following this a second word appeared and they were required to pronounce it as quickly as possible. On half the trials this second word was a primary associate of the decision word whilst on the other half it was normatively unrelated. On completion of the experiment subjects were given an unexpected recall test. The results showed that there was a significant interaction between the effect of association and type of orienting task. With semantic processing pronunciation of the second word was significantly faster on associate trials. With non-semantic processing there was a significantly smaller facilitation of pronunciation on associated trials. The incidental recall data showed that semantically oriented subjects recalled more decision words than those in the non-semantic condition. These data provide another independent measure of the difference in processing depth underlying semantic and non-semantic orienting tasks. However, unlike previous studies, these results suggest that the two types of task differ in the extent to which they allow associative processing, rather than supporting the view that non-semantic orientation precludes processing at an associative level. Discrepancies between the present result and earlier studies are discussed and an explanation offered.