Data-driven Processing and Priming Effects in a Word-fragment Completion Task

An experiment was designed to examine the role and importance of data-driven processing in an implicit memory task: Word-fragment completion. We investigated the effects of priming and manipulating the context in which the target words had been read. Three main results emerged. First, replicating MacLeod's experiment (1989), we found that there was a very small priming effect for words previously studied in a text. Second, the magnitude of the priming effect increased with the perceptual difficulty of information intake during reading. Third, these variations in priming for the texts were functionally independent of subjects' recall of the text read. These results suggest that data-driven processing plays a critical role in priming. They are consistent with the transfer-appropriate processing theory recently advocated by Roediger, Weldon, and Challis (1989).