title: Is intelligence enhanced by letter priming? A failure to replicate the results of Ciani and Sheldon (2010).
abstract: Previous research has suggested that motivational processes outside an individual's conscious awareness may be primed so as to enhance or impair cognitive performance. The present study involved a conceptual replication of the 2010 study of Ciani and Sheldon (Experiments 1 and 2), employing the same materials and task, to test whether exposure to the letter A before an analogies test improved performance and the letter F impaired it, relative to the neutral letter J. It also examined the effect of pre-exposing participants before testing to a positive or negative verbal passage concerning letter grades. Priming was not found to have any effect: the participants (N = 116), under both pre-exposure conditions, gave analogies scores which were virtually identical whether they had been primed with A, F, or J, thus contradicting the previous results. It is concluded that there is a pressing need for more replications of priming experiments as well as other studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, 2600 College St., Sherbrooke, QC, Canada J1M 1Z7. seancarlin89@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Sean P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Carlin
authors.forename: Lionel G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Standing
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation