Early interference in a priming task with brief masked targets.

Abstract

Priming effects were examined in two experiments using either a pronunciation or lexical decision task. The prime, cither a strong associate of the target, an unrelated word, or a neutral prime, was presented for 200 ms. After an SOA ol 200, 400, or 8(K) ms, a masked target was presented for 33.3, 50, or 66.7 ms. Attention was manipulated by varying the probability that prime and target would be strongly associated. Both experiments showed significant interference in the low attention condition and at the 200-ms SOA, presumably before the onset of consciously directed processing. Two subsequent experiments using a short SOA and the low attention condition attempted to determine the conditions under which this interference will occur by varying the interstimulus interval, target duration, and the mask. It was found that interference occurred only when targets were brief and masked. These results are discussed in terms of a model involving lateral inhibition between nodes in semantic memory. It is suggested that when the target is brief and masked, the node in memory corresponding to the target is much less strongly activated and therefore more susceptible to the inhibitory effects of other activated nodes.RKSUMK On a examine dans deux experiences les effets d'amorcage a l'aide d'unc tache de decision lexicale ou de pronunciation. L'amorce, cjui elail soil une forte association de la cible, soil un mot non relie, ou une amorce neutre etait presentee pendant 200 ins. Apres un SOA de 200, 400, ou 800 ms, une cible masqucc ctait presentee pendant 33.3, 50, ou 66.7 ms. L'atiention etait manipulec en variant la probability que l'amorce et la cible soil fortement associees. Les deux experiences ont montrc une interference significative dans la condition ou I'attcntion ctait basse ct au SOA de 200 ms, prcsumement avant le declenehement d'un processing dirige consciemment. Deux experiences subscquentcs utilisant un SOA court el la condition d'aiiemion basse lemaient de determiner les conditions dans lesquellcs survicndraint cette interference en variant I'intcrvallc cntre les stimuli, la durcc dc la cible ct Ic masque. I/interference survenait seulemcnt quand les cibles elaienl presentees brievement ct avee Ic masque. Les rcsultats sont diseutcs en fonction d'un modelc impliquant 1'inhibition latcralc cntrc les nocuds dans la memoire semanlique. Nous suggcrons que lorsque la cible est breve ct masquees, le noeud dans la memoire corrcspondant a la cible est active beaucoup moins fortement et est ainsi plus sueeptiblc aux effcts inhibitcurs d'autres nocuds actives.

Priming effects that span an intervening unrelated word: Implications for models of memory representation and retrieval.

“…For example, there are models with local representations for word nodes in which activity in a node is strongly affected by activity in other nodes (cf. Martindale, 1981; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981; 4 McLeod & Walley, 1989; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1982; Walley & Weiden, 1973).…”

“…This is because additional target strength would be necessary to overcome the contribution of the previous word to the response strength of the other potential responses. It is therefore not at all clear that a difference between magnitude of the relatedness effect spanning an intervening unrelated word and the magnitude of the relatedness effect spanning an intervening nonlinguistic stimulus demands a distributed account (see also McLeod & Walley, 1989).…”

A distributed memory model of semantic priming.

“…This application of ACT* is rather complex in comparison with the Collins and Loftus (1975) model of automatic spreading activation, and it will be challenging to develop principles that can account for changes in the delay parameter and allocation of attention. Joordens and Besner (1992) suggested that disruption of priming by an intervening stimulus is not a critical result for local representation models because (a) the notion of automatic spreading activation as embodied in models such as those of Collins and Loftus (1975), Anderson (1983), andNeely (1991) are not widely held and (b) there are other variants of this class of model that assume inhibitory connections between word nodes, and these models should account for the obtained results (Martindale, 1981;McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981;McLeod & Walley, 1989;Walley & Weiden, 1973). With respect to the importance of the concept of automaticity in spreading activation, it should be noted that the lack of disruption by a small number of intervening items is a component of a number of current theories of semantic priming (e.g., McNamara, 1992aMcNamara, , 1992bMcNamara, , 1994 and is essential to modular theories of language processing in which intralexical priming is assumed to be responsible for sentence context effects in word identification (Seidenberg & Tanenhaus, 1986;Tanenhaus & Lucas, 1987).…”

Automatic semantic priming with various category relations in Alzheimer's disease and normal aging.

“…In contrast, normal s begin to show attentional, strategy-driven effects when the SOAs are longer than 400 ms; at these longer SOAs, the priming effect increases with the proportion of semantically related pairs in the list, and interference from unrelated primes is present (de Groot, 1984; den Heyer, Briand, & Dannenbring, 1983; Neely, 1977; but cf. McLeod & Walley, 1989). One method sometimes used to control for expectancy effects is continuous priming—subjects respond to both primes and targets with no explicit marking between them.…”