The Role of Short-Term Memory in Semantic Priming

• Published in: The Journal of general psychology Vol. 128; no. 3; pp. 329 - 350
• Main Authors: Beer, Anton L., Diehl, Virginia A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Taylor & Francis Group 01.07.2001; Taylor & Francis Inc
• Subjects: Associative Processes; Decision Making; Encoding; Experiments; Explicit knowledge; Female; Humans; Lexical Access; lexical decision; Male; Memory; Memory, Short-Term; Nonsense Words; Priming; Psychology; Random Allocation; semantic memory; Semantic Processing; Semantics; Short term; Short Term Memory; Theory; Word Recognition
• ISSN: 0022-1309; 1940-0888
• DOI: 10.1080/00221300109598915

Two theories of priming were compared: spreading activation theories, in particular ACT* (J. R. Anderson, 1983), and compound-cue theories (R. Ratcliff & G. McKoon, 1988). Whereas ACT* assumes that priming is a result of diffusing activation in long-term memory, compound-cue models suggest that priming results from a formation process of prime and target in short-term memory. Thirty-eight participants took part in a study that combined a digit span task with a double lexical decision task consisting of a prime and a target item. Digit span length (low, medium, and high) and prime type (related or unrelated word or nonword) were both within-subject variables. As expected, results showed significant priming effects. In favor of ACT*, no interaction between digit span length and prime type was found. Additionally, a nonword inhibition effect (unrelated versus nonword prime) was found, which was predicted by compound-cue theories. This finding is discussed in terms of the process interference and response competition hypotheses.