Inhibitory semantic priming of lexical decisions due to failure to retrieve weakly activated codes.

Previous cross-modal priming studies showed that lexical decisions to words after a pronoun were facilitated when these words were semantically related to the pronoun's antecedent. These studies suggested that semantic priming effectively measured antecedent retrieval during coreference. We examined whether these effects extended to implicit reading comprehension using the N400 response. The results of three experiments did not yield strong evidence of semantic facilitation due to coreference. Further, the comparison with two additional experiments showed that N400 facilitation effects were reduced in sentences (vs. word pair paradigms) and were modulated by the case morphology of the prime word. We propose that priming effects in cross-modal experiments may have resulted from task-related strategies. More generally, the impact of sentence context and morphological information on semantic facilitation effects suggests that they may depend on the extent to which the upcoming input is predicted, rather than automatic spreading activation between semantically related words.

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The effects of aging and degree of association on the semantic priming of lexical decisions

Experimental Aging Research ◽

10.1080/03610738308258443 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 9 (3) ◽

pp. 145-151 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Darlene V. Howard

Keyword(s):

Semantic Priming ◽

Lexical Decisions ◽

Effects Of Aging ◽

Degree Of Association

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Combining the Post-Cue Task and the Perceptual Identification Task to Assess Parallel Activation and Mutual Facilitation of Related Primes and Targets

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000396 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 65 (2) ◽

pp. 84-97 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Demian Scherer ◽

Dirk Wentura

Keyword(s):

Semantic Priming ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

The Other ◽

Perceptual Identification ◽

Identification Task ◽

Priming Effects ◽

Priming Paradigm ◽

Parallel Activation ◽

Prime Target

Abstract. Recent theories assume a mutual facilitation in case of semantic overlap for concepts being activated simultaneously. We provide evidence for this claim using a semantic priming paradigm. To test for mutual facilitation of related concepts, a perceptual identification task was employed, presenting prime-target pairs briefly and masked, with an SOA of 0 ms (i.e., prime and target were presented concurrently, one above the other). Participants were instructed to identify the target. In Experiment 1, a cue defining the target was presented at stimulus onset, whereas in Experiment 2 the cue was not presented before the offset of stimuli. Accordingly, in Experiment 2, a post-cue task was merged with the perceptual identification task. We obtained significant semantic priming effects in both experiments. This result is compatible with the view that two concepts can both be activated in parallel and can mutually facilitate each other if they are related.

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What Does It Take to Activate Stereotypes? Simple Primes Don’t Seem Enough

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000183 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (3) ◽

pp. 187-193 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Florian Müller ◽

Klaus Rothermund

Keyword(s):

Social Cognition ◽

Semantic Priming ◽

Response Priming ◽

Priming Effects ◽

Stereotype Activation

According to social cognition textbooks, stereotypes are activated automatically if appropriate categorical cues are processed. Although many studies have tested effects of activated stereotypes on behavior, few have tested the process of stereotype activation. Blair and Banaji (1996) demonstrated that subjects were faster to categorize first names as male or female if those were preceded by gender congruent attribute primes. The same, albeit smaller, effects emerged in a semantic priming design ruling out response priming by Banaji and Hardin (1996) . We sought to replicate these important effects. Mirroring Blair and Banaji (1996) we found strong priming effects as long as response priming was possible. However, unlike Banaji and Hardin (1996) , we did not find any evidence for automatic stereotype activation, when response priming was ruled out. Our findings suggest that automatic stereotype activation is not a reliable and global phenomenon but is restricted to more specific conditions.

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