It is shown that lexical decision times to strong associates with an associative strength of approximately 40% are facilitated relative to targets following a neutral prime, "blank," whereas very weak associates with an associative strength of less then 3% are neither facilitated nor inhibited. It is also shown that relative to the "blank" baseline time, a row of crosses inhibits processing of the following target. The latter finding has implications for earlier studies that have used crosses as a neutral prime. In these studies, facilitation effects have been overestimated and inhibition effects have been underestimated. Neely (1976) has proposed a predict-and-match strategy according to which subjects are assumed to predict one or more targets from the prime and to match the actual target onto the predicted targets. A part of this theory is not supported by the present data. The results are discussed in terms of the two-process theory of expectancy (Posner & Snyder, 1975). They are also considered in the light of a recent theory by Becker (1980). As an alternative interpretation of part of the reported data, a coherenceassumption by the subjects about all reading materials is introduced.Many papers have appeared recently dealing with the notion of "priming" in word recognition. "Priming" is the technical term for influencing the processes of word recognition by a preparatory stimulus, the prime. Generally, either sentence fragments (Blank & Foss, 1978;Fischler & Bloom, 1979Forster, 1976;Schuberth & Eimas, 1977;Stanovich & West, 1979; West & Stanovich, 1978) or individual words (Becker, 1979; Fischler, 1977a Fischler, , 1977bFischler & Goodman, 1978;Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971;Neely, 1976Neely, ,1977Warren, 1977) have been tested for their priming effect on the recognition of a following word, the target. In the studies reported here, we have used individual words as primes. This choice was motivated by the main question initially posed in the present series of experiments, namely, whether the strength of an associative connection between prime and target determines the amount of influence exerted by the prime on target processing. Associative strength is generally assessed from word association norms, consisting of a list of stimulus words and the response words given to each of these by the subjects participating in the free association test. The associative strength between a stimulus word and a response word is determined as the proportion of subjects producing the response word to that particular stimulus word. The immediately prior presentation of a word that evokes a particular response word in a word association task has been shown to facilitate recognition

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

How do we select combinations of limb segments to carry out physical tasks? Three possible determinants of limb-segment selection are hypothesized here: (1) optimal amplitudes and frequencies of motion for the effectors; (2) preferred movement axes for the effectors; and (3) a tendency to continue using already-recruited limb-segments. We tested these factors in a graphic production task. Seven subjects produced back-and-forth drawing movements of gradually changing amplitude. The largest amplitude to be covered, trial duration, movement axis, and direction of amplitude change (from small to large or vice versa) were varied between trials. Selspot recordings were used to study the relative contributions of the fingers, hand, and arm to displacements of the pen. The temporal order of limb-segment involvement was also studied. The results confirmed the predicted effects of the three limb-segment selection factors. We conclude that limb-segment coordination is adaptively related to biomechanical features of the motor system and to the computational demands of movement selection itself.