Facilitation by semantic priming in Alzheimer's disease and control groups matched for accuracy of word recognition.

Facilitation of word recognition was compared for Alzheimer's disease (n?=?10) and elderly control (n?=?10) groups in an experimental paradigm developed by T. R. Kwapil, D. C. Hegley, L. J. Chapman, and J. P. Chapman (1990). The task involved presenting a priming word to a participant followed by a related, neutral, or unrelated target word in a degraded form. The participant's task was to recognize the target word. Level of degradation was manipulated during a series of practice trials so that the overall accuracy of target word recognition for the neutral and related words was about 50%. The purpose of this manipulation was to minimize the artifactual effect of overall accuracy of word recognition on difference scores. With an overall accuracy level of 57% on the experimental trials for both groups, a smaller facilitation effect was found for the Alzheimer group than for the controls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

General slowing in semantic priming and word recognition.

Analyses of lexical decision studies revealed that (1) older (O) adults' mean semantic priming effect was 1.44 times that of younger (Y) adults, (2) regression lines describing the relations between O and Y adults' latencies in related (O?=?1.54 Y?–?112) and unrelated conditions (O?=?1.50 Y?–?93) were not significantly different, and (3) that there was a proportional relation between O and Y adults' priming effects (O?=?1.48 Y?–?2). Analyses of word-naming studies yielded similar results. Analyses of delayed pronunciation data (D. A. Balota & J. M. Duchek, 1988) revealed that word recognition was 1.47 times slower in O adults, whereas O adults' output processes were only 1.26 times slower. Overall, analyses of whole latencies and durations of component processes provide converging evidence for a general slowing factor of approximately 1.5 for lexical information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult aging effects on semantic and episodic priming in word recognition.

Two experiments compared automatic semantic and episodic priming effects in adult aging. In the 1st experiment, target words were semantically primed; in the 2nd experiment, targets were primed by repetition of semantically unrelated words. Both experiments involved a pronunciation task with response signals at fixed times following target onset. Consequently, priming was measured as improvement in the percentage of correct responses. Priming was also calculated with speed–accuracy measures of intercept and slope. Both types of priming effect were significant in the percentage correct and slope measures, but no age group differences were found. Furthermore, the magnitudes of the priming effects were equivalent. The age-resistant nature of semantic and episodic priming, as well as evidence for a common theoretical mechanism, is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term semantic priming of word meaning.

Three experiments investigated facilitation in synonym decisions as a function of prior synonym decision trials that were either identical or semantically related. Experiment 1 demonstrated that semantically related prime trials produced less facilitation than identical prime trials, but facilitation from both persisted over 14 intervening trials. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that word meaning retrieval without meaning comparison in prime trials was sufficient for persistent facilitation in semantically related targets, and meaning comparison was necessary for repetition priming to show greater facilitation than semantic priming. Results suggest that semantic priming in this task may solely reflect strength changes in abstract semantic representations, whereas repetition priming may reflect additional nondeclarative memory for operations performed in prime events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When are morphemic and semantic priming observed in visual word recognition?

J. Stolz and D. Besner (1998) reported a dissociation between morphemic and semantic priming in the context of lexical decision. Morphemic priming was observed following letter search on the prime display, but semantic priming was not. The 14 participants in the present experiment identified the color of a single letter in the prime display before making a lexical decision to the target. Both morphemic and semantic priming were observed. These results are discussed in relation to the observation that identifying the color of a single letter of a word in the Stroop task is associated with a reduction in the size of the Stroop effect as compared to when all letters are colored. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological priming in auditory word recognition.

Used a priming technique to test specific predictions regarding cohort activation in 3 experiments involving 170 undergraduates. Ss identified target words embedded in noise at different signal-to-noise ratios. The target words were either presented in isolation or preceded by a prime item that shared phonological information with the target. In Exp I, primes and targets were English words that shared 0, 1, 2, 3, or all phonemes from the beginning of the word. In Exp II, nonword primes preceded word targets and shared initial phonemes. In Exp III, word primes and word targets shared phonemes from the end of a word. Reliable phonological priming was observed in all experiments. Results of Exps I and II support the assumption of activation of lexical candidates based on word-initial information, as proposed in cohort theory; however, results of Exp III, which showed increased probability of correctly identifying targets that shared phonemes from the end of words, did not support the predictions derived from the theory. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Competitor priming in spoken word recognition.

Most models predict that priming a word should retard recognition of another sharing its initial sounds. Available short lag priming data do not clearly support the prediction. The authors report 7 continuous lexical-decision experiments with 288 participants. With lags of 1–5 min between prime and probe, response time increased for a monosyllabic word preceded by a word sharing its onset and vowel (but not one sharing its rime) and for a polysyllabic word preceded by another sharing its first syllable. The effect was limited to words primed by words, suggesting that identifying the prime strengthens its lexical attractor, making identification of a lexical neighbor more difficult. With lags of only a few trials, facilitatory effects of phonological similarity or familiarity bias effects were also seen; this may explain why clear evidence for inhibitory priming has been lacking hitherto. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic versus controlled semantic priming in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenic individuals (n?=?31), including paranoid and nonparanoid diagnostic subgroups, and normal controls (n?=?20) participated in a semantic priming experiment involving a single-choice lexical decision task. For the automatic priming blocks, a 260-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used; for the controlled priming blocks, a 1,000-ms SOA was used. The paranoid subgroup showed significantly less priming than did the control group. The nonparanoid subgroup showed a decrease in priming compared with the control group that approached significance. There was an increased priming effect for the controlled compared with the automatic priming condition; this difference was not modulated by participant group. Nonsignificant semantic priming (equal to 0) occurred only for schizophrenic subgroups and only in automatic priming conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abstract word deficits in aphasia: Evidence from semantic priming.

J.G. and D.E. are nonfluent aphasic patients who appear to have selective problems with abstract words on a variety of standard tests. Such a pattern would normally be interpreted as indicating a central semantic deficit for abstract words. The authors show that this is not the case by means of a semantic priming task that tests for implicit knowledge of the meanings of abstract and concrete words. Spoken word pairs that were either abstract or concrete synonyms (e.g., street-road or luck-chance) were presented; both Ss showed priming for the abstract and concrete pairs. The researchers followed up by asking the Ss to produce definitions to spoken abstract and concrete words; these definitions were also normal. The priming and definition data suggest that the semantic representations of abstract words in these Ss were relatively unimpaired. The researchers found that the Ss have problems only with spoken abstract words in just those tasks where normal controls also have difficulty. In contrast, they clearly have deficits in reading abstract words aloud, which may be due to problems with output phonology. Implications of these data for claims concerning hemispheric differences in the representation of abstract and concrete words are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The recognition potential and word priming

The effect of priming on the latency of the recognition potential (RP) was tested using rapid stream stimulation. Subjects detected five-letter words in a stream of nonword images. Lifting the right index finger signalled detection of a word. Rapid responses were rewarded and false alarms were penalized. Just before generating an image stream, a computer briefly displayed either the specific target word or or five-letter string that indicated the target was any one of ten previously studied words. Precise target specification was expected to produce more rapid detection than the provision of less definite information. Since the RP was thought to reflect the speed of perception, it was predicted that its latency would be less when the target word was beforehand than when less specific information was provided. The results for 10 subjects confirmed the hypothesis.     

Phonologically mediated priming in spoken and printed word recognition.

Three priming studies investigated the role of phonology in both spoken- and printed-word recognition. Homophone primes (e.g., dough and doe) made ambiguous through auditory presentation (e.g., /do/), produced significant semantic priming effects on target words related to multiple interpretations of the ambiguous prime (e.g., bread and deer). In contrast, homophone primes made unambiguous through visual presentation failed to produce comparable priming effects. For example, the phonologically mediated priming effects from dough to deer and from doe to bread were found to be small relative to the direct semantic priming effects from dough to bread and from doe to deer. These results indicate that phonology does not play the same mediating role during printed-word recognition as it does during spoken-word recognition. Instead, orthography appears to constrain the activation of lexical entries during printed-word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative priming in word recognition: A context effect.

In 5 experiments using a priming methodology, the role of contextual factors on Ss' performance in a word-recognition task was investigated. Ss read short stories, and then their recognition of words from the stories was tested. Effects of contextual factors on Ss' performance were examined by manipulating the context of the stories' presentation and by designing the experimental materials to weaken the effects of semantic relations between primes and targets, thereby enhancing Ss' opportunity to use contextual relations between the words. The overall results of all 5 experiments indicate that context influences the priming effect of close semantic relations. They can be interpreted as supporting cue-retrieval models of priming mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic access of semantic information by phonological codes in visual word recognition.

An important issue in reading research is the role of phonology in visual word recognition. This experiment demonstrated that naming time of a target word (e.g., nut) is facilitated more by a homophone of a semantic associate (e.g., beach) than by a visually similar control (e.g., bench). However, this priming effect from the homophone obtained only when the prime word was exposed for 50 msec and was followed by a pattern mask and not when it was exposed for 200 msec before the pattern mask. In contrast, the "appropriate" prime (e.g., beech) provided facilitation at both exposure durations. Because the priming was obtained with a stimulus onset asynchrony of 250 msec, these data provide support for G. C. Van Orden's (1987) verification model, which posits that meaning is accessed through the automatic activation of phonological information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cognitive load on semantic priming in patients with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenic and control participants received 2 blocks of trials in each experiment. In 1 block they were exposed to regular priming trials (doctor–nurse), and in another block a nonlexical probe was presented at prime onset for 40 ms. Regardless of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), the schizophrenic patients showed hyperpriming when no distractor was present. Paying attention to the distracting stimulus reduced priming in the patient group irrespective of SOA. Under certain situations, the reduction in priming appeared even when participants were asked to ignore the distracting stimulus. Thus, even a nonsemantic distractor may be detrimental to schizophrenic patients' language processing. That SOA did not modulate the reduction in priming effect is consistent with the suggestion that attentional resources are required even with short prime–target intervals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention constraints of semantic activation during visual word recognition.

The reduction of semantic priming following letter search of the prime suggests that semantic activation can be blocked if attention is allocated to the letter level during word processing. Is this true even for the very fast-acting component of semantic activation? To test this, the authors explored semantic priming of lexical decision at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of either 200 or 1000 ms. Following semantic prime processing, priming occurred at both SOAs. In contrast, no priming occurred at the long SOA following letter-level processing. Of greatest interest, at the short SOA there was priming following the less demanding consonant/vowel task but not following the more attention-demanding letter search task. Hence, semantic activation can occur even when attention is directed to the letter level, provided there are sufficient resources to support this activation. The authors conclude that the default setting during word recognition is for fast-acting activation of the semantic system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related slowing and the time course of semantic priming in visual word identification.

Investigated, in 4 experiments, the time course of semantic priming effects during 2 forms of visual word identification, lexical decision and pronunciation. On each trial, a target letter string was preceded by a single-word priming context. The effects of varying the stimulus onset asynchrony between the prime and the target indicated that the time course of semantic priming was equivalent for young and older adults. There were no consistent differences between lexical decision and pronunciation in the time course of semantic priming. The age differences associated with response selection were greater than would be predicted by generalized age-related slowing. The semantic priming effects were also inconsistent with a generalized slowing model, but the reliability of these effects was substantially lower than the reliability of the other task-related variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition in bilinguals: Evidence from masked phonological priming.

Bilingual written language representation was investigated with the masked phonological priming paradigm. Pseudohomophonic and control primes of French target words were used to show that Dutch–French bilinguals exhibit the same pattern of phonological and orthographic priming as native French speakers, which suggests that the same processes underlie first- and second-language processing. It was also found that for bilinguals, but not monolinguals, it is possible to prime a target word of the second language with a homophonic stimulus (either word or nonword) of the first language. This interlingual phonological priming effect was of the same size as the intralingual priming effect. Implications for theories of bilingual written language representation and for the interpretation of the masked phonological priming paradigm are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic semantic priming: Effect of category exemplar level and word association level.

Evaluated semantic priming when the prime was masked below naming threshold and the target was named in 4 experiments with 263 undergraduates. Exp I showed that when word primes were masked and word targets were named, prior knowledge of the related pairs did not alter semantic priming. Semantic priming within categories occurred only when the prime stimulus was the 1st category exemplar. Findings of Exp II indicate that when masked pictures were used as primes, semantic priming for word targets was sensitive to the category exemplar level of the prime but not to the category exemplar level of the target. Word association norms collected in Exp III did not support the hypothesis that the effect of category exemplar level was mediated by the strength of word association. Exp IV revealed significant semantic priming for masked picture primes and within-category word targets, regardless of the level of word association between prime and target. Exp IV also demonstrated semantic priming for high word association targets that were not members of the same semantic category. For all experiments, Ss with the longest average reaction times (RTs) also showed the largest semantic priming effect for naming word targets. It is suggested that viewing one of the highest ranking category exemplars activates the memory representation of the category, perhaps because such prototypic exemplars are contained within the category concept itself. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraints on the additive relationship between semantic priming and word repetition and on the interactive relationship between semantic priming and stimulus clarity.

Describes 2 experiments that manipulated priming condition, repetition, and stimulus clarity. Exp 1 with 87 undergraduates confirmed the additive relationship between semantic priming and word repetition when the time between repetitions was relatively long. Exp 2 with 82 undergraduates limited the number of intervening trials between repetitions (0, 1, 3, 7 trials). Results are interpreted as support for the position that there are 3 components to the repetition effect: sensory, lexical, and episodic. Degradation increased the repetition effect in both experiments without affecting the semantic priming effect. This was interpreted to mean that degradation had its effect late in the information processing sequence. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of backward priming on word recognition in single-word and sentence contexts.

Backward priming was investigated under conditions similar to those used in lexical ambiguity research. Ss received prime-target word pairs that were associated either unidirectionally (BABY-STORK) or bidirectionally (BABY-CRY). In Exp 1, targets were presented 500 ms following the onset of visual primes, and Ss made naming or lexical decision responses to the targets. Forward priming was obtained in all conditions, while backward priming occurred only with lexical decision. In Exp 2, primes were presented auditorily, either in isolation or in a sentence. Targets followed the offset of the primes either immediately or after 200 ms. Backward priming occurred with both response tasks, but only when the prime was an isolated word. Backward priming decreased over time with the naming task, but not with lexical decision. These results suggest that the locus of the backward priming effect is different for the 2 response tasks. Results support a context-independent view of lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)