![The Prime Task Effect [microform] : an Investigation of Semantic Vs. Associative Priming and the Activation Blocking Account PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/SJ1KvwEACAAJ?fife=w150-h200)
Author: Natalie Alvina KacinikPublisher: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada
ISBN: 9780612308008
Category : Paired-association learning
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
A consistent finding in the semantic priming literature is that performing a letter search on the prime eliminates the facilitation usually obtained in the standard lexical decision task. This phenomenon has been explained in terms of both a drawing away of attention from the word to the letter level, and an "activation block" at the lexical-semantic interface. In the present experiment it was asked whether this effect varies as a function of the type of prime-target relationship; specifically, whether prime letter search has differential effects for unassociated semantically related pairs high in featural similarity (e.g., SPARROW-ROBIN), than for stimulus pairs associatively related but very low in terms of shared semantic features (e.g., HAYSTACK-NEEDLE). In Experiment 1, prime task (reading or letter search) was manipulated between subjects, while type of relatedness (associative versus semantic) was manipulated within subjects. Results indicated a significant decrease in the facilitation for the semantically related pairs in the letter search condition, but no change in the priming effect for the associative pairs. On the basis of association norms collected for our primes, it was found that most of our associated pairs did not seem to be strongly associated for our subjects (Experiment 2). For Experiment 3 new associated pairs were created based on the norms and prime task was manipulated using a within subjects design. The priming effect obtained in the standard priming condition was significantly reduced but not eliminated in the letter search condition. Findings are discussed in the context of the lexical-semantic distinction and the activation blocking account.
