title: Spreading activation versus compound cue accounts of priming: mediated priming revisited.
abstract: Spreading activation theories and compound cue theories have both been proposed as accounts of priming phenomena. According to spreading activation theories, the amount of activation that spreads between a prime and a target should be a function of the number of mediating links between the prime and target in a semantic network and the strengths of those links. The amount of activation should determine the amount of facilitation given by a prime to a target in lexical decision. To predict the amount of facilitation, it is necessary to measure the associative links between prime and target in memory. Free-association production probability has been the variable chosen in previous research for this measurement. However, in 3 experiments, the authors show priming effects that free-association production probabilities cannot easily predict. Instead, they argue that amount of priming depends on the familiarity of the prime and target as a compound, where the compound is formed by the simultaneous presence of the prime and target in short-term memory as a test item.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: McKoon
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ratcliff
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D005608:Free Association; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D012107:Research Design; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary