Long-term priming of neighbours biases the word recognition process: evidence from a lexical decision task.
The role of orthographically similar words (i.e., neighbours) in the word recognition process has been studied extensively using short-term priming paradigms (e.g., Colombo, 1986). Here we demonstrate that long-term effects of neighbour priming can also be obtained. Experiment 1 showed that prior study of a neighbour (e.g., TANGO) increased later lexical decision performance for similar words (e.g., MANGO), but decreased performance for similar pseudowords (e.g., LANGO). Experiment 2 replicated this bias effect and showed that the increase in lexical decision performance due to neighbour priming is selectively due to words from a relatively sparse neighbourhood. Explanations of the bias effect in terms of lexical activation and episodic memory retrieval are discussed.
Wagenmakers
Eric-Jan
EJ
Department of Psychology, University of Amesterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ewagenmakers@fmg.uva.nl
Raaijmakers
Jeroen G W
JG
D015982:Bias; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011336:Probability; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary