In a lexical decision task with two primes and a target, the target was preceded 300 msec by the second prime (P2) which in turn was preceded by a brief forward and backward masked first prime (PI). When PI and P2 were unrelated, reaction times were faster when the target was related to P2 (e.g., wave SALT ... pepper) than when the target was unrelated to P2 (and PI-e.g., wave LOAN ... pepper). However, this semantic priming effect was reduced to statistically nonsignificant levels when PI and P2 were repetitions of the same word. That is, priming did not occur for salt SALT . . . pepper relative to loan LOAN ... pepper. This reduction in priming was observed whether P2 and the target were strongly or weakly related. These findings raise problems for current accounts of semantic priming.Since Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) reported their seminal research, a large body ofwork has focused on delineating the mechanisms that underlie the semantic priming effect (see Neely, 1991, for a review). In the currently most popular version of this paradigm originated by Neely (1976), a person first silently reads a single prime word and then makes a speeded response to a target that appears after a brief delay. Semantic priming refers to the consistent finding that reaction times (RTs) to a target word are faster when it is preceded by a semantically related prime rather than an unrelated prime. ' The present research explores how semantic priming is affected by the prime itself being primed. The study most relevant to this issue was recently reported by BaIota and Paul (1996). They examined priming when two primes (1) were both related to the target and each other (e.g., copper bronze . . . METAL) or (2) were both related to the target but unrelated to each other (e.g., kidney piano ... ORGAN). In both cases, priming was enhanced, and to the same degree, relative to when only the second prime (P2) was related to the target and the two primes were unrelated to each other (e.g., order bronze . . . METAL or wagon piano . . . ORGAN).

In these experiments, 2 letters were presented sequentially to the left and right of fixation, followed by pattern masks. Report was cued by spatial location (Experiments 1a, 1b, 2, 4, and 5) or temporal position (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). In all experiments, 2 identical letters on a trial resulted in reduced accuracy of report (repetition blindness; RB) for both the 1st and 2nd presented letters. This decrement was greater for the 2nd letter if subjects expected temporal cues, but tended to be greater for the 1st letter if they expected spatial cues. Analyses of errors and responses on catch trials indicated no bias against report of repetitions, and the repetition decrement did not interact with output order. The data are inconsistent with both type-refractoriness and memory-retrieval accounts of RB. A modified version of N. G. Kanwisher's (1987) token-individuation theory is proposed to account for the results.

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