Is semantic activation automatic? A critical re-evaluation.

Abstract

n this chapter, we evaluate evidence from the past 25 years relevant to Snyder's (1975) andNeely's (1977) claim that words automatically activate their meanings, a claim recently called a myth (Besner, Stolz, & Boutilier, 1997;Stolz & Besner, 1999). According to Posner and Snyder's (1975) seminal treatment and some of the subsequent refinements made by Neumann (1984) and Bargh (1989Bargh ( , 1994, an automatic process (a) is fast acting, (b) is capacity free, (c) can occur without intention, (d) is involuntary or uncontrollable, and (e) can occur without conscious awareness. Although these five criteria were originally given equal weighting, they have not been examined to the same extent. Because of page limitations, we focus on whether semantic activation (SA) is capacity free and can occur without intention. We chose the former because it has not been extensively investigated and in our opinion may prove to be an informative area for future research. We chose the latter because it has been extensively used as a virtual litmus test for SA automaticity. (For more extensive treatments of the other criteria, see

Divided attention modulates semantic activation: Evidence from a nonletter-level prime task

“…If semantic processing of the prime is modulated by the availability of attentional resources, as was found in this study, this may contradict the suggestion that fastacting semantic activation is automatic and unavoidable (see, e.g., Neely, 1977;Neely & Kahan, 2001). The critical postulation for the hypothesis of automaticity in visual word recognition is that the mere presentation of a word is enough to activate its representation (Posner & Carr, 1992).…”

Simon says: Reliability and the role of working memory and attentional control in the Simon task

“…It is widely assumed that semantic activation (and its subsequent spread) underlying semantic priming occurs automatically (for reviews, see Neely, 1991;Neely & Kahan, 2001). Stolz et al investigated the implicit assumption that automatic activation should be reliable by assessing the reliability of semantic priming in response times (RTs) in a series of lexical decision studies that crossed three relatedness proportions (i.e., the proportions of trials in which the prime and the word target were semantically related) and three SOAs.…”

Does a Working Memory Load Really Influence Semantic Priming? A Self-replication Attempt

“…The complete lack of semantic priming for FA pairs in the high load conditions led us to conclude that prospective priming mechanisms require cognitive resources. Hence, target pre-activation is not an automatic process according to Neely and Kahan's (2001) criteria (see Heyman et al, 2015 for more details). The results of the two replication studies seem to discredit this conclusion.…”

“…Several recent studies have examined whether semantic activation, and the priming effect it produces, indeed fulfill Neely and Kahan's (2001) automaticity criteria, but the results are mixed (e.g., Augustinova & Ferrand, 2014;Besner & Reynolds, 2017;Heyman, Hutchison, & Storms, 2016;Heyman et al, 2015;White & Besner, 2016). Here, we will focus on Heyman et al's study (2015), which tested whether the processes underlying semantic priming are capacity free (i.e., the second part of Neely and Kahan's definition) by limiting working memory capacity via a secondary task.…”

“…Indeed, traditional definitions of automaticity (Neely, 1977;Posner & Snyder, 1975) imply that (spatial) attention should play no role. To address this issue, Neely and Kahan (2001) updated the criteria for automaticity. They suggested that a process, such as semantic activation, can be considered automatic if "it is unaffected by the intention for it to occur and by the amount and quality of the attentional resources allocated to it" (Neely & Kahan, 2001, p. 89).…”