Beyond spreading activation: An influence of relatedness proportion on masked semantic priming

• Published in: Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 10; no. 3; pp. 645 - 652
• Main Authors: Bodner, Glen E., Masson, Michael E. J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Austin, TX Psychonomic Society 01.09.2003
• Subjects: Associative Processes; Auditory Masking; Awareness; Biological and medical sciences; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Learning. Memory; Memory; Perceptual Masking; Priming; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Random Allocation; Reaction Time; Relevance Theory; Semantic Categories; Semantic Processing; Semantics; Human; Semantic relation; Semantic memory; Priming effect; Cognition; Masking; Experimental study
• ISSN: 1069-9384; 1531-5320
• DOI: 10.3758/BF03196527

Semantic priming in the lexical decision task has been shown to increase when the proportion of related-prime trials is increased. This finding typically is taken as evidence for a conscious, strategic use of primes. Three experiments are reported in which masked semantic primes displayed for only 45 msec were tested in high- versus low-relatedness proportion conditions. Relatedness proportion was increased either by using a high proportion of semantically related primes or a large set of repetition-primed filler trials. Semantic priming was consistently enhanced relative to a low-relatedness proportion condition. These relatedness proportion effects were not due to conscious, strategic use of primes: Exclusion of prime-aware subjects did not attenuate the effects, and better performance in a prime classification task was not associated with larger semantic priming effects. These results are interpreted within a retrospective account of semantic priming in which recruitment of a prime event is modulated by prime validity.