Conceptual combinations and relational contexts in free association and in priming in lexical decision and naming

Abstract

Words known to have strong associates of a particular relational type were embedded in lists of other words with relations of the same type or in lists of words with relations of a different type (e.g. close-far in a list of other opposite pairs or in a list of synonym pairs), In free association, the probability of a response consistent with the relational context was higher than the probability of a response inconsistent with the context. In lexical decision and naming, significant priming was obtained for related pairs of words only when their relation was consistent with the relational context of the list in which they were embedded. The priming effects were obtained when the stimulus onset asynchrony between prime and target words was short (250 msec for lexical decision and 300 msec for naming), indicating that the effects were due to automatic retrieval processes. These findings point to the importance of the particular relations between words in the retrieval of information from memory, an aspect of processing overlooked by current memory models.Earth-sky, man-father, white-snow: These combinations of concepts are familiar to us in our real lives and in our cognitive psychology research. The concepts in each pair are highly associated to each other, and these associations are frequently thought of as fixed combinations of concepts without any attention given to the relations that hold the combinations together. However, the relations between the concepts in each pair are quite different: earth and sky are opposites on a salient dimension of meaningJather is a member of the category of man, and white describes snow. In this article, we present data to show that the different relations between concepts can be critically important to the cognitive processes that work with combinations of concepts, and we suggest that the ways in which concepts combine are more flexible than previously believed.Early models of semantic memory (Anderson, 1976(Anderson, , 1983Collins & Loftus, 1975;E. E. Smith, Shoben, & Rips, 1974) built into their representations of knowledge fixed relations among concepts. In spreading activation models, which represented knowledge in terms of networks of connections among concepts, a concept like father and its category man were hardwired together by a link between them. Stronger versus weaker associations

The priming of priming: Evidence that the N400 reflects context-dependent post-retrieval word integration in working memory

“…The present ERP data replicate and extend previous behavioural findings by McKoon and Ratcliff [14] and demonstrate that the N400 amplitude for semantically related primetarget pairs (e.g., finger-hand) is substantially attenuated when most other word pairs in the list have the same type of semantic relationship (e.g., part-whole). In other words, for listconsistent items the priming effect itself seems to be enhanced (or 'primed').…”

“…Various recent articles (Lau et al, 2008;Brouwer et al, 2012) have revived the idea that only processes during word-retrieval (such as automatic spreading activation, ASA) are strongly supported, while post-lexical integrative processes are not. The present ERP study replicates a behavioral study by McKoon and Ratcliff (1995) who demonstrated that a prime-target pair such as finger -hand shows stronger priming when a majority of other pairs in the list share the analogous semantic relationship (here: part-whole), even at short stimulus onset asynchronies (250 ms). We created lists with four different types of semantic relationship (synonyms, part-whole, category-member, opposites) and compared priming for pairs in a consistent list with those in an inconsistent list as well as unrelated items.…”

“…The design was inspired by McKoon and Ratcliff's behavioral study [14], which tested various semantically related prime-target pair lists. Each list was dominated by a specific kind of semantic relationship (e.g., one list with synonyms such as far -distant or room -space, another list with partwhole relationships such as finger -hand or blade -knife, and yet other lists with opposites, category-member relationships, etc.).…”

The categorical structure of knowledge for famous people (and a novel application of Centre-Surround theory)☆

“…There is empirical evidence that the magnitude of priming depends on expectations of the prime-target relation (as well as on automatic spreading activation) with larger priming effects when participants expect a particular relationship and smaller priming effects when they do not (e.g. Huttenlocker & Kubicek, 1983;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1995;Neely, 1977;Posner & Snyder, 1975;see Neely, 1991, andHutchison, Neely &Johnson, 2001, for reviews). Of particular relevance, Schweinberger, Pfutze and Sommer (1995) found no effect of associative priming in a task with associated pairs and repeated pairs.…”

Integrative priming occurs rapidly and uncontrollably during lexical processing.

“…Henceforth, word pairs separated by an arrow will denote a lexical decision trial (e.g., PRIME TARGET). Although synonymy (e.g., BABY INFANT) and antonymy (e.g., ORDER Integrative Priming 5 CHAOS) both elicit priming (Hodgson, 1991;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1995;Perea & Rosa, 2002 should reiterate that we are concerned here only with simple noun-noun compounds. Thus, we do not consider instances in which a target noun is integrated with an adjective (e.g., RED APPLE; Smith, Osherson, Rips, & Keane, 1988) or with a more elaborate context, such as a sentence frame, a text passage or general world knowledge (Forster, 1981;Garrod & Terras, 2000;Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, 2004;Hess, Foss, & Carroll, 1995).…”