Priming effects that span an intervening unrelated word: Implications for models of memory representation and retrieval.

Joordens, Steve; Besner, Derek

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.18.3.483

Cited by 66 publications

(88 citation statements)

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“…The other effects varied by a maximum of 4 msec. Notwithstanding Joordens and Besner (1992), who reported a significant 3-msec semantic priming effect, we are of the view that when a theory stands or falls on a 3-msec effect, it is time to pursue other questions.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Single letter coloring and spatial cuing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect

Manwell

Roberts

Besner

2004

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Single letter coloring and spatial cuing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect

Manwell

Roberts

Besner

2004

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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“…Although this account is parsimonious in that it appeals to a common process to accommodate the absence of ambiguity effects in these two tasks, it fails to account for other empirical observations in both of these tasks. First, Joordens and Besner (1992) have reported a small, but significant, effect of semantic priming over an intervening word in a rapid, continuous naming task. If there were no conceptual processing during the naming task, then such an effect could not exist.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic ambiguity effects in word identification.

Borowsky¹,

Masson²

1996

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

179

289

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The influence of semantic ambiguity on word identification processes was explored in a series of word naming and lexical-decision experiments. There was no reliable ambiguity effect in 2 naming experiments, although an ambiguity advantage in lexical decision was obtained when orthographically legal nonwords were used. No ambiguity effect was found in iexical decision when orthographically illegal nonwords were used, implying a semantic locus for the ambiguity advantage. These results were simulated by using a distributed memory model that also produces the ambiguity disadvantage in gaze duration that has been obtained with a reading comprehension task. Ambiguity effects in the model arise from the model's attempt to activate multiple meanings of an ambiguous word in response to presentation of that word's orthographic pattern. Reasons for discrepancies in empirical results and implications for distributed memory models are considered.Any comprehensive theory of mental representation and process must accommodate the complex means by which concepts are communicated through language. Through the course of history, humans have developed tools of communication that facilitate the relaying of ideas and concepts, such as a writing system or orthography. This mapping of concepts to orthography is not entirely one to one, however, resulting in some words that correspond to multiple concepts, which are known as semantically ambiguous words. When reading text, the context provided by preceding words and sentences provides a means of disambiguating such words. As a result, we may not even notice the ambiguity in words that we are reading in context. If, on the other hand, semantically ambiguous words are presented in isolation, their alternative meanings are readily accessible, and thus their ambiguous nature is noticed. In the research reported in this article, we compare performance on semantically ambiguous words with that of semantically unambiguous words in isolated word identification tasks and describe simulations of the empirical effects within the framework of a distributed memory architecture (Masson, 1995).The effect of semantic ambiguity on isolated word identification has usually been determined by comparing performance on unambiguous words (which are associated with only one Ron Borowsky and Michael E. J. Masson, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We thank Steve Lindsay for use of his equipment. We are grateful to Derek Besner and Paul Fera for suggesting that neighborhood density be examined in these experiments and to Rick Bourassa for suggesting the delayed naming experiment.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ron Borowsky, who is now at the Department of Psychology, 9 Campus Drive, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada STN 5A5, or to Michael E. J. Masson, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3050, Victor...

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“…Bentin & Feldman, 1990;Dannenbring & Briand, 1982;Henderson, Wallis, & Knight, 1984;McNamara, 1992b;Monsell, 1985;Rateliff, Hockley, & McKoon, 1985). Studies of semantic priming across a lag of a single intervening item (reviewed in Joordens & Besner, 1992;Masson, 1995) have yielded mixed results; Joordens and Besner (1992) have shown a very small but reliable semantic priming effect in the lexical-decision task across a lag of a single item, even when the possibility of conscious comparison of primes and targets is minimized. Nevertheless, the above literature would suggest that semantic priming has little or no effect beyond the immediate semantic context.…”

Section: Similarity-based Primingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As mentioned in the introduction, the standard finding is that semantic priming fully dissipates for prime-target lags greater than one (see, e.g., Joordens & Besner, 1992). Spreading activation accounts of priming (Anderson, 1983;Collins & Loftus, 1975;Collins & Quillian, 1969;Neely, 1977;Posner & Snyder, 1975) assume a localist representation in which there is a node for each word or concept.…”

Section: Activation Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term semantic priming: A computational account and empirical evidence.

Becker¹,

Moscovitch²,

Behrmann³

et al. 1997

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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181

222

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Semantic priming is traditionally viewed as an effect that rapidly decays. A new view of long-term word priming in attractor neural networks is proposed. The model predicts long-term semantic priming under certain conditions. That is, the task must engage semantic-level processing to a sufficient degree. The predictions were confirmed in computer simulations and in 3 experiments. Experiment 1 showed that when target words are each preceded by multiple semantically related primes, there is long-lag priming on a semanticdecision task but not on a lexical-decision task. Experiment 2 replicated the long-term semantic priming effect for semantic decisions with only one prime per target. Experiment 3 demonstrated semantic priming with much longer word lists at lags of 0, 4, and 8 items. These are the first experiments to demonstrate a semantic priming effect spanning many intervening items and lasting much longer than a few seconds.Many forms of priming have been studied (for reviews, see Monsell, 1985;Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988;Schacter, 1987). Whereas in repetition priming the priming stimulus is identical to the target, in similarity-based priming tests (e.g., form priming, morphological priming, and semantic priming), the prime and target are different words sharing some surface features, semantic features, or both. Repetition priming and form priming have been found to produce long-lasting effects ranging from hours to weeks or even months (e.g., Bentin & Feldman, 1990; Bentin & Moscovitch, 1988;Jacoby & Dallas, 1981;Rueckl, 1990;Sloman, Hayman, Ohta, Law, & Tulving, 1988). Semantic priming, however, is traditionally thought to produce only short-term effects that dissipate after several seconds or after more than one item intervenes between prime and target stimuli. Is it possible that completely different priming mechanisms are operating at semantic levels of processing as compared with other levels at which priming could occur? The most parsimonious account would be that the same mechanisms operate at all levels of the system. In this article, we are concerned particularly with long-term priming and argue in favor of a single mechanism to account for all types of long-term priming. Our view is that short-term semantic priming involves a process completely different from that underlying long-term priming, but either type of process should behave according to the same computational principles at any level of the system, whether it be perceptual or semantic. Although our account of long-term priming is very general, our focus is specifically on semantic priming because our model makes novel predictions in this domain. We first present a theoretical account of long-term priming based on a distributed cormectionist model of word recognition, combined with some very general learning-processing assumptions. The theory specifies conditions under which long-term priming should occur and predicts that semantic priming should produce long-term effects under the appropriate conditions (even though it has not been fo...

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Priming effects that span an intervening unrelated word: Implications for models of memory representation and retrieval.

Cited by 66 publications

References 30 publications

Single letter coloring and spatial cuing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect

Single letter coloring and spatial cuing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect

Semantic ambiguity effects in word identification.

Long-term semantic priming: A computational account and empirical evidence.

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