DoesLGHT primeDARK? Masked associative priming with addition neighbors

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the search for an appropriate orthographic coding scheme for models of visual word recognition. To achieve this goal, it is important that one examine which words are being activated by a given stimulus item. There is ample consensus that, upon visual presentation of a letter string, the lexical units corresponding to words that can be created by changing a single letter of the stimulus are partially activated (i.e., the substitution neighbors). For instance, using a masked priming paradigm, which is a technique particularly useful for examining early effects in visual word recognition (Forster & Davis, 1984; cf. Grainger, 2008), Bourassa and Besner (1998) showed that a brief presentation of the nonword judpe (i.e., a substitution neighbor of the word judge) activated COURT, an associate of its base word, relative to presentation of the unrelated nonword prime oceln. More recent research has shown that a complete characterization of a word's orthographic neighborhood should include items created by transposing two letters: Perea and Lupker (2003) demonstrated that the brief presentation of the transposed-letter nonword jugde activated COURT more than did the unrelated nonword prime ocaen.The focus of the present article is to examine whether addition neighbors produce a pattern of effects similar to those found with substitution and transposed-letter neighbors. We define an addition neighbor as a word that involves the addition of a single letter to a given stimulus item (see Davis & Taft, 2005; e.g., the word house is an addition neighbor of the word hose and of the nonword huse). Specifically, we examine whether a nonword prime (e.g., lght) activates associative/semantic information from its corresponding addition neighbor (DARK via the addition neighbor light), producing associative/semantic priming.Evidence for an influence of addition neighbors in a masked form priming paradigm has already been established. de Moor and Brysbaert (2000) found an inhibitory effect of high-frequency word primes that were addition neighbors of the prime relative to unrelated control primes-similar to what occurs with substitution neighbors (see Segui & Grainger, 1990). In addition, Schoonbaert and Grainger (2004) found a facilitative masked priming effect, relative to an unrelated priming condition, when the related primes were nonwords formed by removing a single letter of the target (e.g., mircle-MIRACLE). However, it is important to mention that the presence of masked associative/semantic priming would be a stronger demonstration of the role of addition neighbors than would the presence of form-priming effects (e.g., lgth priming LIGHT). The reason is that form-priming effects may be due (at least in part) to activation of the sublexical units used in the creation of the orthographic representation, rather than due to activation of the lexical unit for the base word. Elucidating whether addition neighbors activate lexical instead of sublexical representations of words woul...

Text-Speak processing

“…Support for this is given by the greater priming effects of subset primes compared to non-word primes but decreased priming effects of subset words relative to identity words. Additionally, the results provide converging evidence with Perea and Gomez (2010) associative priming results of subset words. Subset words can be used in a repetition priming paradigm (LGHTdark) and generated significant priming effects.…”

“…Presentation of stimuli and recording of reaction times and accuracy were completed on PC computers using Eprime Professional 2.0 (Schneider, Eschman, & Zuccolotto, 2002). On each trial a forward mask of hash marks (#####) was presented centrally for 500 ms followed immediately by the prime (see Perea, Dunabeitia, & Carreiras, 2008;Perea & Gomez, 2010 for a similar priming procedure). The prime was presented in the same location as the hash marks and was Q1.…”

“…Recently, Perea and Gomez (2010) have investigated related (e.g., dctor-nurse) versus unrelated (e.g., flwer-nurse) associative subset priming within a masked priming paradigm in which participants make lexical (word vs non-word) decisions to clearly visible target items. Reaction times (RT) collected in masked priming paradigms constitutes a common technique employed to test unconscious priming (Forester, & Davis, 1984;Forester, & Davis, 1991;Grainger & Segui, 1990;Berent & Perfetti, 1995;Lukatela, Georgije & Turkey, 1996;Perea & Gotor, 1997;Dehaene et al, 1998;Perea and Gomez, 2010). For example, participants can be presented with a forward mask of hash marks (#####) followed immediately by a briefly (50-60 ms) presented word prime, after-which a target item is immediately presented on the screen, to which participants make a lexical decision.…”

Semantic similarity influences early morphological priming in Serbian: A challenge to form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition

“…In the visual lexical decision task, forward masked primes activate related targets more than unrelated primes do when semantic relatedness is based on forms like LGHT that are orthographically distorted words (Perea & Gomez, 2010). Even more relevant, when form overlap is equated, facilitation is greater for morphologically (FELL-FALL) than for form similar (FILL-FALL) prime-target pairs where only the former are similar in meaning (Pastizzo & Feldman, 2002: Crepaldi, Rastle, Coltheart & Nickels, 2010).…”

Psycholinguistic Studies of Word Morphology and Their Implications for Models of the Mental Lexicon and Lexical Processing

“…Further, in the lexical decision task, forward masked nonword primes made by omitting a letter in an associate of the target (LGHT) activated related targets (DARK) more than unassociated nonword primes (Perea & Gomez, 2010). Collectively, these findings with morphologically simple words that are briefly presented and forward masked are consistent with the activation of a word's semantics in parallel with orthographic processing.…”