Similarity effects in word and pseudoword repetition priming.

Abstract

Repetition priming refers to the facilitation in the visual identification of a stimulus produced by a recent encounter with that stimulus. In the paradigm used here, subjects performed a naming task in which a sequence of primes was presented; then they performed a tachistoscopic identification task in which the stimuli that were presented varied in their similarity to the primes. The results indicated that repetition priming facilitated the identification of repeated words and pronounceable nonwords that were similar, but not identical, to the recently encountered primes. Moreover, the number of presentations of the primes influenced the amount of facilitation for repeated words but, in contrast to previous findings, had no effect on the amount of facilitation for repeated nonwords or similar words and nonwords. The results are interpreted within a connectionist model of visual word identification.

Interactive Visual and Postvisual Processes and Their Roles in Form-Specific Memory.

“…If the visual information and the conceptual information associated with a word are stored in spatially separated areas of neocortex, the representation of that word must include some links between the stores (as well as links to phonological stores). This is an idea inherent in many connectionist models of word processing (e.g., Masson, 1995;Plaut & Shallice, 1993;Rueckl, 1990;Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989;Van Orden et al, 1990). The representation of a word per se includes perceptual, conceptual, and phonological information, thus the links between the relevant subsystems are crucial.…”

“…However, given that only weak, not strong, modularity/independence is a hallmark of dissociable areas in neocortex (e.g., Farah, 1994;Van Essen & DeYoe, 1995), visual and postvisual processes may interact in important ways despite their spatial separation. For example, the visual-form representation and the conceptual representation for a word, although stored in spatially separated neocortical subsystems, may be interconnected and interactive, as in neural network models that posit separate pools of units for representing visual and postvisual information for words yet also posit a high degree of interactivity between pools when processing words (e.g., see Masson, 1995;Plaut & Shallice, 1993;Rueckl, 1990;Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989;cf. Van Orden, Pennington, & Stone, 1990).…”

The Effect of Target Repetition on Semantic Priming in a Three-Target RSVP Task

“…As semantic priming produces a performance advantage for related trials (Neely, 1991), and repetition priming produces a performance advantage for repeated items (Durgunoglu, 1988;Forster & Davis, 1984;Rueckl, 1990), it would be expected that repeated word presentation should result in larger semantic priming effects. However, studies have demonstrated that the repeated presentation of primes actually eliminates semantic priming effects in lexical decision tasks (Neely et al, 1998;Pitzer & Dagenbach, 2001).…”

Effect of Prime and Target Repetition on Lexical Decision Time

“…This word repetition effect has been demonstrated using a number of procedures including, for example, lexical decision (Forbach, Stanners, & Hochhaus, 1974), word naming (Scarborough, Cortese, & Scarborough, 1977), perceptual identification (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981), recognition tasks (Ratcliff, Hockley, & McKoon, 1985) and can be observed when repetition is made seconds, minutes, hours, or days apart (Feustel, Shiffrin, & Salasoo, 1983;Salasoo, Shiffrin, & Feustel, 1985;Scarborough, et ul., 1977), or even when subjects are not aware of the first presentation of the stimulus (Forster, Booker, Schacter, & Davis, 1990). Two broad theoretical accounts are given to explain such repetition priming phenomena: we will refer to them as lexical or semantic account and the episodic memory interpretation (see, for example, Forster, et al, 1990;Masson & Freedman, 1990;Rueckl, 1990;Woltz, 1990).…”

“…This word repetition effect has been demonstrated using a number of procedures including, for example, lexical decision (Forbach, Stanners, & Hochhaus, 1974) McKoon, 1985) and can be observed when repetition is made seconds, minutes, hours, or days apart (Feustel, Shiffrin, & Salasoo, 1983;Salasoo, Shiffrin, & Feustel, 1985; Scarborough, et ul., 1977), or even when subjects are not aware of the first presentation of the stimulus (Forster, Booker, Schacter, & Davis, 1990). Two broad theoretical accounts are given to explain such repetition priming phenomena: we will refer to them as lexical or semantic account and the episodic memory interpretation (see, for example, Forster, et al, 1990; Masson & Freedman, 1990;Rueckl, 1990;Woltz, 1990).The former theoretical account of the word repetition effect is based on the assumption that presentation of a word is capable of inducing the activation of its lexical representation. In word detector models (see, for example, Morton, 1979) faster performance on repeated trials is attributed to residual activation or lower thresholds of existing lexical or semantic memory codes for stimulus words.…”