Arcadio Gotor

Associative and semantic priming effects occur at very short stimulus-onset asynchronies in lexical decision and naming

Prior research has found significant associative/semantic priming effects at very short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) in experimental tasks such as lexical decision, but not in naming tasks (however, see Lukatela and Turvey, 1994). In this paper, the time course of associative priming effects was analyzed a several very short SOAs (33, 50, and 67 ms), using the masked priming paradigm (Forster and Davis, 1984), both in lexical decision (Experiment 1) and naming (Experiment 2). The results show small--but significant--associative priming effects in both tasks. Additionally, using the masked priming procedure at the 67 ms SOA. Experiments 3 and 4, shows facilitatory priming effects for both associatively and semantically (unassociated) related pairs in lexical decision and naming tasks. That is, automatic priming can be semantic. Taken together our data appear to support interactive models of word recognition in which semantic activation may influence the early stages of word processing.

Effect of retention interval on the simultaneous cognate-noncognate and remember-know mirror effects.

Recognition memory for Spanish-Catalan cognate and noncognate words was tested at retention intervals of 30 minutes, 3 days, and 7 days using a remember/know response procedure. We observed a clear mirror effect for the cognate-noncognate stimulus class and a remember-know response categorisation at the immediate retention interval. However, the cognate and noncognate mirror was still observed at 3 and 7 days, whereas the remember-know mirror disappeared at both retention intervals. Also, we ran a repeated testing condition to be able to carry out a sequential item analysis and observe the fate of the original remember and know responses 3 or 7 days later. The analysis supported the idea that there was a loss of contextual information that was at the root of the disappearance of the remember-know mirror effect. These results provide support to the idea that it is the imbalance between recollection and familiarity that is the most likely cause of the mirror effect.

EFFECTS OF MASKED REPETITION PRIMING AND ORTHOGRAPHIC NEIGHBORHOOD IN VISUAL RECOGNITION OF WORDS

The role of orthographic neighborhood (neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency) in visual-word recognition was analyzed using the masked repetition-priming paradigm. Specifically, we varied stimulus-onset asynchrony (33, 50, and 67 msec.) and type of prime (identical, unrelated, unprimed) in a lexical-decision task. Analyses show additive effects of repetition and stimulus-onset asynchrony. Further, the unrelated condition overestimated the repetition effects relative to an unprimed condition. Facilitatory effects of neighborhood size and inhibitory effects of neighborhood frequency were also found. The results are interpreted in terms of current models of visual-word recognition.