title: Semantic priming in the lexical decision task: roles of prospective prime-generated expectancies and retrospective semantic matching.
abstract: In semantic priming paradigms for lexical decisions, the probability that a word target is semantically related to its prime (the relatedness proportion) has been confounded with the probability that a target is a nonword, given that it is unrelated to its prime (the nonword ratio). This study unconfounded these two probabilities in a lexical decision task with category names as primes and with high- and low-dominance exemplars as targets. Semantic priming for high-dominance exemplars was modulated by the relatedness proportion and, to a lesser degree, by the nonword ratio. However, the nonword ratio exerted a stronger influence than did the relatedness proportion on semantic priming for low-dominance exemplars and on the nonword facilitation effect (i.e., the superiority in performance for nonword targets that follow a category name rather than a neutral XXX prime). These results suggest that semantic priming for lexical decisions is affected by both a prospective prime-generated expectancy, modulated by the relatedness proportion, and a retrospective target/prime semantic matching process, modulated by the nonword ratio.
authors.affiliation: State University of New York, Albany 12222.
authors.forename: J H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Neely
authors.forename: D E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Keefe
authors.forename: K L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Ross
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D012718:Set, Psychology