title: Bidirectional semantic priming in the attentional blink.
abstract: The time course of semantic priming between two associated words was tracked using rapid serial visual presentation of two synchronized streams of stimuli appearing at about 20 items/sec, each stream including a target word. The two words were semantically related or unrelated and were separated by stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 0-213 msec. Accuracy in reporting the first target (T1) versus the second target (T2) has been shown to interact dramatically with SOA over this range. The materials were in English in Experiment 1 and Italian in Experiment 2. T1 was semantically primed only at short SOAs, whereas T2 was primed at all SOAs (Experiment 1) or at all SOAs except the shortest one (Experiment 2). The results indicate a strong competition between target words early in processing, with T2 often becoming the first word identified at short SOAs, thus priming T1.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. mpotter@mit.edu
authors.forename: Mary C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Potter
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dell'Acqua
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pesciarelli
authors.forename: Remo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Job
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Peressotti
authors.forename: Daniel H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: O'Connor
mesh_terms: D001244:Association; D001288:Attention; D001767:Blinking; D006801:Humans; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013997:Time Factors; D014825:Vocabulary