Semantic priming and the word repetition effect in a lexical decision task.

Two experiments were conducted with 35 university students and community residents to examine the relationship between semantic priming and the word-repetition effect in lexical decisions. Although it might be expected that these phenomena are caused by the operation of similar memory processes, given current models of word recognition, the relationship between them has not been empirically investigated. In the present study, the persistance of both effects was observed, and it was found that while facilitation due to semantic priming persisted for only a short time, the word repetition effect was quite strong and long-lasting. (French abstract) (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Masked priming effects with syllabic neighbors in a lexical decision task.

Four lexical decision experiments using a masked priming paradigm were conducted to analyze whether the previous presentation of a syllabic neighbor (a word sharing the same 1st syllable) influences recognition performance. The results showed an inhibitory effect of more frequent syllabic primes and some facilitation of nonword syllabic primes (Experiments 1-3). When monosyllabic pairs were used (Experiment 3), no priming effects of the 2 initial letters were found. Finally, when using only syllables as primes, latencies to words were shorter when preceded by primes that corresponded to the 1st syllable than by primes that contained 1 letter more or less than the lst syllable (Experiment 4). Results are interpreted using activation models that take into account a syllabic level of representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term priming of neighbours biases the word recognition process: Evidence from a lexical decision task.

The role of orthographically similar words (i.e., neighbours) in the word recognition process has been studied extensively using short-term priming paradigms (e.g., Colombo, 1986). Here we demonstrate that long-term effects of neighbour priming can also be obtained. Experiment 1 showed that prior study of a neighbour (e.g., TANGO) increased later lexical decision performance for similar words (e.g., MANGO), but decreased performance for similar pseudowords (e.g., LANGO). Experiment 2 replicated this bias effect and showed that the increase in lexical decision performance due to neighbour priming is selectively due to words from a relatively sparse neighbourhood. Explanations of the bias effect in terms of lexical activation and episodic memory retrieval are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is in a word? No versus Yes differentially engage the lateral orbitofrontal cortex.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 7(4) of Emotion (see record 2007-17748-007). The supplemental materials link should appear as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.3.649.supp.] The words "No" and "Yes" are involved in conditioning to prohibit or encourage behavior, respectively. The authors, therefore, hypothesized that these words would be attributed to endogenous valence, activating neuronal circuits involved with valence and emotional control. Functional MRI (fMRI) at 4 Tesla was used to record regional brain activity while participants were exposed to emphatic vocalizations of the words. Results showed that No and Yes were associated with opposite brain-behavior responses; while No was negatively valenced, produced slower response times, and evoked a negative signal in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), Yes was positively valenced, produced faster response times, and evoked a positive signal in a contiguous region of the OFC. Attribution of negative valence to No and trait anger control were associated with increased responsivity of the OFC to No. Inasmuch as sensitivity to the prohibitive command No develops during childhood through interaction with primary caregivers as the first social objects, our findings may implicate the lateral OFC in the neurobiology of emotion regulation and subsequent social development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological priming in the lexical decision task: regularity effects are not necessary evidence for assembly

The contribution of assembled phonology in reading English was examined in the lexical decision task by comparing two markers: regularity effects and phonological priming. Strategic control was assessed by manipulating the phonological lexicality of the foils: Experiment 1 used legal nonwords, whereas Experiment 2 used pseudohomophones. Replicating existing findings, null regularity effects were obtained in the presence of legal nonwords. Modest regularity effects, in accuracy only, were observed with pseudohomophone foils. In contrast, phonological priming effects emerged in each of the experiments, regardless of the presence of regularity effects. Assembled phonology thus constrains reading under conditions that strongly discourage its use. However, regularity effects are not necessary evidence for its presence. The dissociation of regularity and phonological priming effects is discussed in terms of the two-cycles model.     

The effects of word association and meaning frequency in a cross-modal lexical decision task: Is the priming due to "semantic" activation?

Two experiments examined the effects of priming by ambiguous, auditorily presented word primes. In related conditions, primes were followed by either associatively related or semantically related but associatively unrelated targets. When the targets were presented at prime offset (Exp 1), priming effects were observed only for associatively related targets, independent of meaning frequency (i.e., whether the target was related to the dominant or subordinate meaning of the ambiguous prime). When the targets were presented after a 700 msec delay (Exp 2), however, priming effects were observed only for targets related to the prime's dominant meaning, regardless of the nature of the prime-target relation. These results raise the strong possibility that previously reported differences in the nature of priming effects that had been ascribed to meaning frequency might actually be due to differences in associative strength. These results are discussed in terms of J. A. Fodor's (1983; 1990) "anti-semantic" modularity view. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"What is in a word? No versus Yes differentially engage the lateral orbitofrontal cortex": Correction.

Reports an error in "What is in a word? No versus Yes differentially engage the lateral orbitofrontal cortex" by Nelly Alia-Klein, Rita Z. Goldstein, Dardo Tomasi, Lei Zhang, Stephanie Fagin-Jones, Frank Telang, Gene-Jack Wang, Joanna S. Fowler and Nora D. Volkow (Emotion, 2007[Aug], Vol 7[3], 649-659). The supplemental materials link should appear as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.3.649.supp. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2007-11660-018.) The words "No" and "Yes" are involved in conditioning to prohibit or encourage behavior, respectively. The authors, therefore, hypothesized that these words would be attributed to endogenous valence, activating neuronal circuits involved with valence and emotional control. Functional MRI (fMRI) at 4 Tesla was used to record regional brain activity while participants were exposed to emphatic vocalizations of the words. Results showed that No and Yes were associated with opposite brain-behavior responses; while No was negatively valenced, produced slower response times, and evoked a negative signal in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), Yes was positively valenced, produced faster response times, and evoked a positive signal in a contiguous region of the OFC. Attribution of negative valence to No and trait anger control were associated with increased responsivity of the OFC to No. Inasmuch as sensitivity to the prohibitive command No develops during childhood through interaction with primary caregivers as the first social objects, our findings may implicate the lateral OFC in the neurobiology of emotion regulation and subsequent social development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The long and short of semantic priming effects in lexical decision.

Unlike other forms of priming, semantic priming appears only to occur at short lags. In apparent contrast to this, S. Becker, M. Moscovitch, M. Behrmann, and S. Joordens (1997) described a theory of priming that predicts long-term effects for all forms of relatedness. This prediction is reconciled with previous failures to observe long-term semantic priming on the basis of 2 claims: (a) that previously used pairs share few semantic features and (b) that tasks typically used to study priming are not especially sensitive to semantic influences. The present experiments provide further support for these claims by demonstrating long-term semantic priming in the lexical-decision task when the stimuli and task are modified in a way that increases semantic involvement. However, the findings suggest that in addition to the mechanism advocated by Becker et al., a second mechanism is necessary to provide a complete account of semantic priming effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic priming in the lexical decision task: Roles of prospective prime-generated expectancies and retrospective semantic matching.

In semantic priming paradigms for lexical decisions, the probability that a word target is semantically related to its prime (the relatedness proportion) has been confounded with the probability that a target is a nonword, given that it is unrelated to its prime (the nonword ratio). This study unconfounded these two probabilities in a lexical decision task with category names as primes and with high- and low-dominance exemplars as targets. Semantic priming for high-dominance exemplars was modulated by the relatedness proportion and, to a lesser degree, by the nonword ratio. However, the nonword ratio exerted a stronger influence than did the relatedness proportion on semantic priming for low-dominance exemplars and on the nonword facilitation effect (i.e., the superiority in performance for nonword targets that follow a category name rather than a neutral XXX prime). These results suggest that semantic priming for lexical decisions is affected by both a prospective prime-generated expectancy, modulated by the relatedness proportion, and a retrospective target/prime semantic matching process, modulated by the nonword ratio. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Components of activation: Repetition and priming effects in lexical decision and recognition.

Examined activation decay functions in 4 experiments in which 52 undergraduates performed 2 different tasks: lexical decision and word recognition. Activation (amount of facilitation) was measured both for item repetition and for priming between newly learned associates. Results indicate that there were at least 3 different components of activation: a short-term component that decayed with 1 or 2 intervening items and appeared to be common to priming and repetition, an intermediate component for repetition in recognition, and a long-term component for repetition. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pseudohomophone effects in lexical decision: Still a challenge for current word recognition models.

Computational models that implement a serial mechanism of phonological assembly predict interactions between the size of the pseudohomophone (PsH) effect and stimulus length. Models with frequency-sensitive word representations predict baseword frequency effects. These predictions were tested in a lexical-decision task. The results showed constant PsH effects across different word lengths (in favor of parallel phonological activation) and baseword frequency effects (in favor of frequency-sensitive representations). However, the baseword frequency effect was opposite of what the models predicted. This result is most easily accommodated by models that assume an orthographic verification mechanism. The plausibility of such a mechanism was further supported by the results of 2 additional experiments investigating the effects of response speed and spelling probability (feedback consistency) on the size of the PsH effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental chronometry: Beyond onset latencies in the lexical decision task.

Four experiments addressed the influence of variables on lexical decision performance after response initiation has occurred. In Experiment 1, participants made an arm movement in one direction for word trials and pressed a button with the other hand for nonword trials. The results indicated that word frequency not only modulated the speed to initiate the arm movement, but also modulated the acceleration and force of the movement after initiation. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that word frequency and stimulus degradation produced large and additive effects on response latency, accuracy, and the force of the response after initiation. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants made the same arbitrary speech response in a modified lexical decision task for both high- and low-frequency words. The results indicated that both the onset and duration of the speech response were modulated by word frequency. The results are viewed as most consistent with an enabled response model, wherein early operations can enable appropriate action systems before central decisions are made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depth of automatic spreading activation: Mediated priming effects in pronunciation but not in lexical decision.

Conducted lexical decision and pronunciation experiments, using a total of 140 university students, to investigate whether activation automatically spreads beyond directly associated concepts within the memory network. Prime-target pairs were constructed such that there was a relation between the prime (e.g., lion) and the target (e.g., stripes) only through a mediating concept (e.g., tiger). The lexical decision results yielded facilitation of directly related priming conditions (e.g., lion–tiger and tiger–stripes); however, the mediated condition (e.g., lion–stripes) did not facilitate performance compared with either a neutral prime or an unrelated prime condition. In contrast, the pronunciation results yielded facilitation of both directly related and mediated priming conditions. Results are viewed as supporting the notion that activation spreads beyond directly related concepts in semantic memory. It is suggested that characteristics of the lexical decision task masked the appearance of a mediated priming effect. Implications of an automatic spread of activation beyond directly related concepts are discussed. The stimulus triads used are appended. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making things difficult in lexical decision: The impact of pseudohomophones and transposed-letter nonwords on frequency and semantic priming effects.

Performance in a lexical decision task is crucially dependent on the difficulty of the word–nonword discrimination. More wordlike nonwords cause not only a latency increase for words but also, as reported by Stone and Van Orden (1993), larger word frequency effects. Several current models of lexical decision making can explain these types of results in terms of a single mechanism, a mechanism driven by the nature of the interactions within the lexicon. In 2 experiments, we replicated Stone and Van Orden's increased frequency effect using both pseudohomophones (e.g., BEEST) and transposed-letter nonwords (e.g., JUGDE) as the more wordlike nonwords. In a 3rd experiment, we demonstrated that simply increasing word latencies without changing the difficulty of the word–nonword discrimination does not produce larger frequency effects. These results are reasonably consistent with many current models. In contrast, neither pseudohomophones nor transposed-letter nonwords altered the size of semantic priming effects across 4 additional experiments, posing a challenge to models that would attempt to explain both nonword difficulty effects and semantic priming effects in lexical decision tasks in terms of a single, lexically driven mechanism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming processes in the Simon task: More evidence from the lexical decision task for a third route in the Simon effect.

Recently, it was proposed that the Simon effect would result not only from two interfering processes, as classical dual-route models assume, but from three processes. It was argued that priming from the spatial code to the nonspatial code might facilitate the identification of the nonspatial stimulus feature in congruent Simon trials. In the present study, the authors provide evidence that the identification of the nonspatial information can be facilitated by the activation of an associated spatial code. In three experiments, participants first associated centrally presented animal and fruit pictures with spatial responses. Subsequently, participants decided whether laterally presented letter strings were words (animal, fruit, or other words) or nonwords; stimulus position could be congruent or incongruent to the associated spatial code. As hypothesized, animal and fruit words were identified faster at congruent than at incongruent stimulus positions from the association phase. The authors conclude that the activation of the spatial code spreads to the nonspatial code, resulting in facilitated stimulus identification in congruent trials. These results speak to the assumption of a third process involved in the Simon task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of polysemy in lexical decision and naming: An alternative to lexical access accounts.

The effects of polysemy (number of meanings) and word frequency were examined in lexical decision and naming tasks. Polysemy effects were observed in both tasks. In the lexical decision task, high- and low-frequency words produced identical polysemy effects. In the naming task, however, polysemy interacted with frequency, with polysemy effects being limited to low-frequency words. When degraded stimuli were used in both tasks, the interaction appeared not only in naming but also in lexical decision. Because stimulus degradation also produced an effect of spelling-sound regularity in the lexical decision task, the different relationships between polysemy and frequency appear to be due to whether responding was based primarily on orthographic or phonological codes. As such, the effects of polysemy seem to be due to the nature of task-specific processes. An explanation in terms of M. S. Seidenberg and J. L. McClelland's (see record 1990-03520-001) and D. C. Plaut and J. L. McClelland's (1993) parallel distributed processing models is proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Episodic and lexical contributions to the repetition effect in word identification.

Conducted 5 experiments (1 in 2 parts) with undergraduates (N?=?198) to study the repetition effect (RE); this term refers to the finding that the speed and accuracy of naming a visually presented word is enhanced by a single prior presentation of the word. Procedures are described in detail, and the findings of the experiments are compared and discussed. A model was developed that outlines the relative contributions to the RE in word and nonword identification that are made (a) by episodic traces for particular events and (b) by unitized representations of words in semantic memory. A prominent role in the model is played by the unitization that characterizes identification of words and is missing for nonwords. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency in lexical decision: Evidence for opposing interactive influences revealed by RT distributional analyses.

The joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency in lexical decision were examined in 4 experiments as a function of nonword type (legal nonwords, e.g., BRONE, vs. pseudohomophones, e.g., BRANE). When familiarity was a viable dimension for word-nonword discrimination, as when legal nonwords were used, additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency were observed in both means and distributional characteristics of the response-time distributions. In contrast, when the utility of familiarity was undermined by using pseudohomophones, additivity was observed in the means but not in distributional characteristics. Specifically, opposing interactive effects in the underlying distribution were observed, producing apparent additivity in means. These findings are consistent with the suggestion that, when familiarity is deemphasized in lexical decision, cascaded processing between letter and word levels is in play, whereas, when familiarity is a viable dimension for word-nonword discrimination, processing is discrete. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Qualitative differences between the joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency in reading aloud and lexical decision: Extensions to Yap and Balota (2007).

There have been multiple reports over the last 3 decades that stimulus quality and word frequency have additive effects on the time to make a lexical decision. However, it is surprising that there is only 1 published report to date that has investigated the joint effects of these two factors in the context of reading aloud, and the outcome of that study is ambiguous. The present study shows that these factors interact in the context of reading aloud and at the same time replicate the standard pattern reported for lexical decision. The main implication of these results is that lexical activation, at least as indexed by the effect of word frequency, does not unfold in a uniform way in the contexts reported here. The observed dissociation also implies, contrary to J. A. Fodor's (1983) view, that the mental lexicon is penetrable rather than encapsulated. The distinction between cascaded and thresholded processing offers one way to understand these and related results. A direction for further research is briefly noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orthography and phonology in lexical decision: Evidence from repetition effects at different lags.

Full- and partial- (orthographic or phonemic) repetition effects for Hebrew voweled and unvoweled words and nonwords were examined at Lags 0 and 15 between the first and the second presentations. For voweled words, phonemic and orthographic partial-repetition effects were equivalent at Lag 0, each about half the size of the full-repetition effect. At Lag 15, the full-repetition effect was reduced to the size of phonemic repetition, which was as big as it was at Lag 0. In contrast, the orthographic repetition effect disappeared. For unvoweled words, the phonemic repetition effect was significant only at Lag 0, whereas the full-repetition effect was significant at both lags. Lexical decisions for both voweled and unvoweled nonwords were facilitated only by full repetition at Lag 0. It was concluded that addition of vowel marks attracted the subjects' attention and, therefore, lexical decisions for voweled stimuli were mediated by phonemic analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)