Early interference in a priming task with brief masked targets.

Priming effects were examined in 2 experiments with 216 undergraduates in which a pronunciation or lexical decision task was used. Attention was manipulated by varying the probability that prime and target would be strongly associated. Both experiments showed significant interference in the low attention condition and at the 200-msec SOA, presumably before the onset of consciously directed processing. Two subsequent experiments with 160 undergraduates used a short SOA and the low attention condition to determine the conditions under which this interference would occur by varying the interstimulus interval, target duration, and the mask. Interference occurred only when targets were brief and masked. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)