title: Negative priming from masked words: retrospective prime clarification of center-surround inhibition?
abstract: Masked repetition and semantic priming effects were examined in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, a masked-prime lexical decision task followed a phase of detection, semantic, or repetition judgments about masked words. In Experiment 2 participants made speeded pronunciations to target words after they tried to identify masked primes, and the proportion of semantically and identically related prime-target pairs was varied. Center-surround theory CT. H. Carr & D. Dagenbach, 1990; D. Dagenbach, T. H. Carr, & A. Wilhelmsen, 1989) predicts positive repetition priming but negative semantic priming when people attempt, but fail, to extract the meanings of masked words. A retrospective prime-clarification account, in contrast, predicts that semantic and repetition priming effects will vary (being positive or negative) as a function of expectations about the prime-target relation. The data support a retrospective prime-clarification account, which, unlike center-surround theory, correctly predicted negative repetition priming effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA. todd.kahan@usm.edu
authors.forename: T A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Kahan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics