An event-related brain potential analysis of visual word priming effects.
Two experiments are reported that provide evidence on task-induced effects during visual lexical processing in a prime-target semantic priming paradigm. The research focuses on target expectancy effects by manipulating the proportion of semantically related and unrelated word pairs. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision task was used and reaction times (RTs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were obtained. In Experiment 2, subjects silently read the stimuli, without any additional task demands, and ERPs were recorded. The RT and ERP results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that an expectancy mechanism contributed to the priming effect when a high proportion of related word pairs was presented. The ERP results of Experiment 2 show that in the absence of extraneous task requirements, an expectancy mechanism is not active. However, a standard ERP semantic priming effect was obtained in Experiment 2. The combined results show that priming effects due to relatedness proportion are induced by task demands and are not a standard aspect of online lexical processing.
Brown
C M
CM
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Hagoort
P
P
Chwilla
D J
DJ
D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004585:Electrooculography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary