Masked priming with orthographic neighbors: A test of the lexical competition assumption.

Abstract

In models of visual word identification that incorporate inhibitory competition among activated lexical units, a word's higher frequency neighbors will be the word's strongest competitors. Preactivation of these neighbors by a prime is predicted to delay the word's identification. Using the masked priming paradigm (K. I. Forster & C. Davis, 1984, J. Segui and J. Grainger (1990) reported that, consistent with this prediction, a higher frequency neighbor prime delayed the responses to a lower frequency target, whereas a lower frequency neighbor prime did not delay the responses to a higher frequency target. In the present experiments, using English stimuli, it was found that this pattern held only when the primes and targets had few neighbors; when the primes and targets had many neighbors, lower frequency primes delayed responses to higher frequency targets essentially as much as higher frequency primes delayed responses to lower frequency targets. Several possible explanations for these findings are discussed along with their theoretical implications. Considered together, the results are most consistent with activation-based accounts of the masked priming effect.

Eyes wide open: Pupil size as a proxy for inhibition in the masked-priming paradigm

“…It also happens that the behavioral results differed such that our RTs appeared to be less sensitive to inhibition than those obtained by Nakayama et al With this in mind, it is possible that the LDT is sensitive to prime SOA, whereas the pupil is less so (since the pupil data mirror the RTs of Nakayama et al, 2008). If, as Kuchinke et al (2007) suggested, the pupil is not sensitive to early processes in the LDT, our results may indicate that prime SOA has an early impact on the LDT and on the subsequent RT data.…”

“…To date, the available literature regarding inhibitory priming using English stimuli has been mixed; studies have shown all possible effects (i.e., facilitatory, inhibitory, and null priming effects; see, e.g., Davis & Lupker, 2006;Forster, 1987;Forster & Veres, 1998;Morris & Still, 2012;Nakayama et al, 2008).…”

“…using Davis and Lupker's (2006) stimuli, failed to demonstrate inhibitory priming using the standard maskedpriming paradigm; the expected effect was found only when long (64-ms) and short (48-ms) duration primes were intermixed within the same block, thereby suggesting that attention may moderate inhibitory priming in the maskedpriming paradigm. Nevertheless, other investigators have succeeded in obtaining inhibitory priming using different English-language stimulus sets, insofar as the stimuli are short in length (four to five letters) and have dense neighborhoods (e.g., Morris & Still, 2012;Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, 2008). In sum, the literature shows that inhibitory priming is not always found when it is expected.…”

“…One should then observe an interaction between frequency and prime similarity. In English, at least, the observation of this interaction appears to be moderated by prime neighborhood size-that is, primes with dense neighborhoods should elicit inhibitory priming, regardless of the target's own frequency (Nakayama et al, 2008). Because the interaction between orthographic similarity and relative prime-target frequency is a theoretically important aspect of inhibitory priming, we manipulated relative prime-target frequency while recording pupil size and RTs concomitantly.…”

Word length effects for kana and kanji words in lexical decision tasks

“…e.g., e.g., 2002 1995 e.g., Colthear, Davelaar, Jonasson, & Besner, 1977 e.g., Davis & Lupker, 2006;Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, 2008 -e.g., Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, 2011 e.g., -e.g., Nakayama, Sears, Hino, & Lupker, in press Nakayama et al in press Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras 2009 Zhou, Marslen-Wilson, Ta , & Shu 1999-e.g., Balota, Cortese, Sergent-Marchall, Spieler, & Yap, 2004Frederiksen & Kroll, 1976;Juphard, Carbonnel, & Valdois, 2004;Richardson, 1976 e.g., Forster, 1976Ta Ta , 2003Ta , 2004;Ta & Kougious, 2004; e.g., Balota et al, 2004;Frederiksen & Kroll, 1976;Juphard et al, 2004;Richardson, 1976 1 2 1 2 e.g., Hino & Lupker, 1998 - …”