Semantic priming from letter-searched primes occurs for low- but not high-frequency targets: Automatic semantic access may not be a myth.

Abstract

Letter-search (LS) within a prime often eliminates semantic priming. In 2 lexical decision experiments, the authors found that priming from LS primes occurred for low-frequency (LF) but not high-frequency (HF) targets whether the target's word frequency was manipulated between or within participants and whether the prime-target pairs were associated symmetrically or forward asymmetrically. For the LF targets, LS priming was (a) equivalent for forward asymmetric and symmetric pairs and (b) equal to silent-read (SR) priming for forward asymmetric pairs but less than SR priming for symmetric pairs. The typical finding of greater SR priming for response times for LF than for HF targets occurred for symmetric priming but not for forward asymmetric priming, which showed the interaction for errors. The authors consider their findings' implications for various accounts of how LS affects priming and explain the findings within J. H. Neely and D. E. Keefe's (1989) 3-process model as follows: (a) LS eliminates expectancy and semantic matching but does not reduce semantic activation and (b) expectancy contributes to SR priming for HF targets but not for LF targets, whereas the opposite is so for semantic matching.

Single-letter coloring and spatial cuing do not eliminate or reduce a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect

“…Taken together, these different findings combine to support the idea that SA in the Stroop task seems to be difficult to eliminate and can, therefore, be considered to be automatic, in the sense that it occurs without intent and cannot be prevented. This conclusion is also supported by findings obtained with the semantic priming paradigm, which shows that naming the color of a single letter within a prime word does not eliminate semantic priming (MacNevin & Besner, 2002) and that searching for a letter in a word neither eliminates the SA of the corresponding word (Hutchison & Bosco, 2007) nor eliminates semantic priming (see, e.g., Tse & Neely, 2007), at least when the target words have a low frequency of occurrence in print.…”

Semantic word priming in the absence of eye fixations: Relative contributions of overt and covert attention

“…Regarding processing of word meaning, our findings are consistent with those obtained in studies using semantic-priming paradigms in which eye fixations were not assessed or prevented (e.g., Ortells et al, 2001;Tse & Neely, 2007). The demonstration of semantic priming from words that were not fixated is one of the main contributions of the present study.…”

“…In prior research, spatial attention had been prevented by presenting the unattended words briefly and away from the current fixation, assuming that there was no time for saccades. This was achieved by means of presenting a prime and a probe simultaneously, but spatially separated (Tse & Neely, 2007), or by the use of precuing paradigms (Ortells et al, 2001). In these conditions, prime words at irrelevant locations have been found to facilitate the processing of a related probe.…”

“…In spatial attention paradigms, prime words appear at locations separate (vertically displaced or lateralized) from probes or visually capturing cues. Some studies have found word priming (e.g., Kanne, 2002;Marzouki & Grainger, 2008;Ortells, Abad, Noguera, & Lupiáñez, 2001;Tse & Neely, 2007). However, Lachter, Forster, and Ruthruff (2004) have argued that uncontrolled deployment of attention may have occurred in studies showing processing of spatially "unattended" words.…”

Modulation of additive and interactive effects in lexical decision by trial history.

“…A list of 240 target words, each item comprised of four to seven letters, along with a related prime word for each target was constructed by supplementing the list of pairs provided by Tse and Neely (2007). Half of the word targets were of relatively high frequency (M ϭ 170,438), and the other half were of low frequency (M ϭ 16,594), according to frequency norms generated by the English Lexicon Project database .…”