How to drastically reduce priming in word stem completion—and still present the words

Brooks, John O.; Gibson, Janet M.; Friedman, Leah; Yesavage, Jerome A.

doi:10.3758/bf03211406

Cited by 10 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…It entailed removing potential word-specific differences between auditory study and visual study and between auditory test and visual test. This second measure was in keeping with the observation of Brooks and colleagues (Brooks, Gibson, Friedman, & Yesavage, 1999) that word-specific factors may be more potent determinants of long-term priming than are conventional manipulations (e.g., modality and processing task at study). Of particular concern for stem (and fragment) completion tasks is the phonological consistency of the words selected for the experiment.…”

supporting

confidence: 59%

“…Other experiments point to the same conclusion (e.g., Brooks et al, 1999;Rueckl & Mathew, 1999). Of significance to this suggested revision-and of relevance to identifying the phonology in question-are observations that phonetic length affects visual lexical decision.…”

Section: The General System For Learning and Identifying Wordsmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…One possibility is that priming in the same modality can be superior to priming across modalities because of the characteristics of the studied words. The general importance of word characteristics for long-term priming has been underscored by the investigations of Brooks et al (1999). They examined transfer from visual study to visual stem completion.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Equivalent inter- and intramodality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard

et al. 2007

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A frequent experimental observation within implicit memory paradigms is that word priming is superior when the prime is presented in the same modality as the test word (visual-study-visual-test [VV] and auditory-studyauditory-test [AA]), as compared with when the prime is presented in a different modality (auditory-study-visualtest [AV] and visual-study-auditory-test [VA]). This frequent observation has motivated two important theoretical conclusions.One conclusion is in respect to the issue of whether the same lexicon underlies visual and auditory word recognition. In Morton's (1969) original logogen model, a word's representation in long-term memory (its logogen) is strengthened by both visual and auditory experiences with the word. A logogen's strength is measured by the ease, or speed, with which the logogen reaches a criterion level of activation. Morton's original proposal could not be preserved, however, in the face of experiments demonstrating substantial intramodal priming but negligible intermodal priming (e.g., Morton, 1979). A key feature of the original logogen theory was that once a logogen is made to fire, either by sight or by sound, it returns only slowly to its original state. Consequently, if the two modalities share the same logogen system, an earlier auditory experience of a word must help a later visual experience of that same word, and vice versa. Furthermore, an earlier experience in a modality different from the later experience should be as beneficial as an earlier experience in the same modality. Without convincing evidence in favor of the latter expectations, Morton (1979Morton ( , 1980Morton ( , 1982 was forced to distinguish two memory systems, one for words as read and one for words as heard. Any communication between the two stores could occur only through what he called the cognitive system-the site of meanings, cognitive strategies, and decision making. Most subsequent discussions of the relation between perceiving words by ear and by eye have sided with Morton's final assessment of independent lexicons (e.g., Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001;Ellis & Young, 1996;Patterson & Sewell, 1987). Indeed, Morton's conclusion was a primary motivation for the development of dual-route theory (see the historical survey in Coltheart et al., 2001).The other conclusion, motivated by superior priming in within-modality than in cross-modality conditions, is in respect to the issue of what underlies the distinction between implicit and explicit memory measures. One interpretation is that the two measures index two separate memory systems (e.g., Tulving & Schacter, 1990). Another is that they reflect a difference between the kinds of processes and conditions shared between the original experiencing of an event (call it study) and the subsequent testing of the memory for that event (e.g., Blaxton, 1989;Roediger & Blaxton, 1987). The latter interpretation is continuous with the ideas of transfer-appropriate processing (TAP; Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977) and encoding specific...

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supporting

confidence: 59%

Section: The General System For Learning and Identifying Wordsmentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Equivalent inter- and intramodality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard

et al. 2007

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“…Thus, both Backman et al (1997) and Daselaar et al (2005) examined the effects of aging on word-stem completion priming, a test that appears to rely not only on perceptual processes, but also on conceptual and phonemic processes (Brooks, Gibson, Friedman, and Yesavage, 1999; Rueckl and Mathew, 1999). Backman et al (1997) reported no age difference in priming and similar RS for young and elder subjects in extrastriate cortex.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging Does Not Affect Brain Patterns of Repetition Effects Associated with Perceptual Priming of Novel Objects

Soldan

Gazes

Hilton

et al. 2008

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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This study examined how aging affects the spatial patterns of repetition effects associated with perceptual priming of unfamiliar visual objects. Healthy young (N=14) and elderly adults (N=13) viewed four repetitions of structurally possible and impossible figures while being scanned with BOLD fMRI. Although explicit recognition memory for the figures was reduced in the elder subjects, repetition priming did not differ across the two age groups. Using multivariate linear modeling, we found that the spatial networks of regions that demonstrated repetition-related increases and decreases in activity were identical in both age groups, although there was a trend for smaller magnitude repetition effects in these networks in the elder adults for objects that had been repeated three times. Furthermore, repetition-related reductions in activity in left inferior frontal cortex for possible objects correlated with repetition-related facilitation in reaction time across both young and elder subjects. Repetition-related increases of an initially negative response were observed for both object types in both age groups in parts of the default network, suggesting that less attention was required for processing repeated stimuli. These findings extend prior studies using verbal and semantic picture priming tasks and support the view that perceptual repetition priming remains intact in later adulthood because the same spatial networks of regions continue to show repetition-related neural plasticity across the adult life span.

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“…However, against other published rates from North American samples, we can show a good match. Comparing rates for lists published in Brooks, Gibson, Friedman, and Yesavage (1999), our database produces mean rates for each list (where stems overlap) that are different only by an average of 1.9%. This suggests at least some utility for non-British samples.…”

Section: Supplemental Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

British English norms for the spontaneous completion of three-letter word stems

Migo

Roper

Montaldi

et al. 2010

Behavior Research Methods

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Word stem completion tasks involve showing participants a number of words and then later asking them to complete word stems to make a full word. If the stem is completed with one of the studied words, it indicates memory. It is a test widely used to assess both implicit and explicit forms of memory. An important aspect of stimulus selection is that target words should not frequently be generated spontaneously from the word stem, to ensure that production of the word really represents memory. In this article, we present a database of spontaneous stem completion rates for 395 stems from a group of 80 British undergraduate psychology students. It includes information on other characteristics of the words (word frequency, concreteness, imageability, age of acquisition, common part of speech, and number of letters) and, as such, can be used to select suitable words to include in a stem completion task. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://brm .psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.Word stem completion (WSC) tasks have a long history of use in psychology, where their initial introduction indicated that implicit memory can be preserved in amnesic patients (Warrington & Weiskrantz, 1970). Participants are shown lists of words, unaware of a later memory task. Subsequently, they are presented with the first few letters of a word and are asked to complete this stem with the first word that comes to mind (see Roediger, Weldon, Stadler, & Riegler, 1992, for a review). Explicit memory versions ask for completions that are remembered from the study list (Greene, 1986). An increase in stem completion levels due to preexposure of the words indicates memory. This methodology is still widely used in tasks ranging from cerebral blood flow measures (Sorond, Schnyer, Serrador, Milberg, & Lipsitz, 2008) to behavioral tasks in healthy participants (Benjamin Clarke & Butler, 2008) and patients (e.g., Alzheimer's disease, LaVoie & Faulkner, 2008; schizophrenia, Pope & Kern, 2006).The selection of words to use in WSC tasks is critical. The stem must be able to form multiple words when completed. Words should not be proper nouns and should have sufficient frequency for participants to know them and their meanings. They should have relatively matched imageability and concreteness. Information on these characteristics is available through established databases (e.g., M. Wilson, 1988).One key criterion, particularly important for implicit tasks, is that the words used should not commonly be produced in a spontaneous WSC task. Since participants must generate the first completion that comes to mind, a frequent spontaneous completion reduces the distance between chance and ceiling performance. In imaging studies, "correct" responses would be more likely to be guesses, adding unwanted noise to the neural signal. Matching low levels of spontaneous WSC across word lists-and ideally, all words-ensures that tasks are sensitive and reliable.Spontaneous WSC rates are not easily available, and studies have run p...

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How to drastically reduce priming in word stem completion—and still present the words

Cited by 10 publications

References 37 publications

Equivalent inter- and intramodality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard

Equivalent inter- and intramodality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard

Aging Does Not Affect Brain Patterns of Repetition Effects Associated with Perceptual Priming of Novel Objects

British English norms for the spontaneous completion of three-letter word stems

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