scholarly journals Semantic Priming Effects in a Lexical Decision Task: Comparing third Graders and College Students in two Different Stimulus Onset Asynchronies

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 589-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Steffen Holderbaum ◽  
Jerusa Fumagalli de Salles

Differences in the semantic priming effect comparing child and adult performance have been found by some studies. However, these differences are not well established, mostly because of the variety of methods used by researchers around the world. One of the main issues concerns the absence of semantic priming effects on children at stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) smaller than 300ms. The aim of this study was to compare the semantic priming effect between third graders and college students at two different SOAs: 250ms and 500ms. Participants performed lexical decisions to targets which were preceded by semantic related or unrelated primes. Semantic priming effects were found at both SOAs in the third graders' group and in college students. Despite the fact that there was no difference between groups in the magnitude of semantic priming effects when SOA was 250ms, at the 500ms SOA their magnitude was bigger in children, corroborating previous studies. Hypotheses which could explain the presence of semantic priming effects in children's performance when SOA was 250ms are discussed, as well as hypotheses for the larger magnitude of semantic priming effects in children when SOA was 500ms.

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-97
Author(s):  
Candice Steffen Holderbaum ◽  
Letícia Lessa Mansur ◽  
Jerusa Fumagalli de Salles

ABSTRACT Investigations on the semantic priming effect (SPE) in patients after left hemisphere (LH) lesions have shown disparities that may be explained by the variability in performance found among patients. The aim of the present study was to verify the existence of subgroups of patients after LH stroke by searching for dissociations between performance on the lexical decision task based on the semantic priming paradigm and performance on direct memory, semantic association and language tasks. All 17 patients with LH lesions after stroke (ten non-fluent aphasics and seven non aphasics) were analyzed individually. Results indicated the presence of three groups of patients according to SPE: one exhibiting SPE at both stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), one with SPE only at long SOA, and another, larger group with no SPE.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Guglielmi ◽  
Davide Quaranta ◽  
Ilaria Mega ◽  
Emanuele Maria Costantini ◽  
Claudia Carrarini ◽  
...  

Introduction: Semantic memory is impaired in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Two main hypotheses about this finding are debated and refer to the degradation of stored knowledge versus the impairment of semantic access mechanisms. The aim of our study is to evaluate semantic impairment in MCI versus healthy subjects (HS) by an experiment evaluating semantic priming. Methods: We enrolled 27 MCI and 20 HS. MCI group were divided, according to follow up, into converters-MCI and non converters-MCI. The semantic task consisted of 108 pairs of words, 54 of which were semantically associated. Stimuli were presented 250 or 900 ms later the appearance of the target in a randomized manner. Data were analyzed using factorial ANOVA. Results: Both HS and MCI answered more quickly for word than for non-word at both stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) intervals. At 250 ms, both MCI and HS experienced a shorter time of response for related-word than for unrelated words (priming effect), while only the converters-MCI subgroup lost the priming effect. Further, we observed a rather larger Cohen’s d effect size in non converters-MCI than in converters-MCI. Conclusion: Our data, and in particular the absence of a semantic priming effect in converters-MCI, could reflect the impairment of semantic knowledge rather than the accessibility of semantic stores in MCI individuals that progress to dementia.


1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothee J. Chwilla ◽  
Peter Hagoort ◽  
C.M. Brown

Koriat (1981) demonstrated that an association from the target to a preceding prime, in the absence of an association from the prime to the target, facilitates lexical decision and referred to this effect as “backward priming”. Backward priming is of relevance, because it can provide information about the mechanism underlying semantic priming effects. Following Neely (1991), we distinguish three mechanisms of priming: spreading activation, expectancy, and semantic matching/ integration. The goal was to determine which of these mechanisms causes backward priming, by assessing effects of backward priming on a language-relevant ERP component, the N400, and reaction time (RT). Based on previous work, we propose that the N400 priming effect reflects expectancy and semantic matching/ integration, but in contrast with RT does not reflect spreading activation. Experiment 1 shows a backward priming effect that is qualitatively similar for the N400 and RT in a lexical decision task. This effect was not modulated by an ISI manipulation. Experiment 2 clarifies that the N400 backward priming effect reflects genuine changes in N400 amplitude and cannot be ascribed to other factors. We will argue that these backward priming effects cannot be due to expectancy but are best accounted for in terms of semantic matching/integration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuhong Tong ◽  
Mengdi Xu ◽  
Jing Zhao ◽  
Liyan Yu

This study used priming paradigm with lexical decision task to examine the effects of different levels of semantic relatedness on the identification of Chinese phonetic–semantic compound characters. Unlike previous studies that simply classify Chinese compound characters as semantically transparent or opaque, we categorize the semantic relatedness between semantic radicals (i.e., prime) and the target characters containing them into five levels: highly related (i.e., high condition; e.g., prime ± vs. target 地), moderately related (i.e., moderate condition; e.g., prime ± vs. target 场), minimally related (i.e., minimal condition; e.g., prime ± vs. target 塔), unrelated but sharing the semantic radical (i.e., form-only condition; e.g., prime ± vs. target 坏), and unrelated without sharing the semantic radical (i.e., control condition; e.g., prime ± vs. target 涌). Moreover, three stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA)s (i.e., 57, 140, and 243 ms) were used in this study to dissociate the radical- and character-level semantic priming effects. Results revealed a graded priming effect of the semantic radical on character recognition in Chinese readers for all SOAs. More specifically, the facilitative effect of the semantic radical on character processing was most evident for the high condition, followed by the minimal, form-only, and control conditions. This suggests a graded priming effect of the semantic radical on character identification.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (10) ◽  
pp. 1546-1563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Amenta ◽  
Davide Crepaldi ◽  
Marco Marelli

In human language the mapping between form and meaning is arbitrary, as there is no direct connection between words and the objects that they represent. However, within a given language, it is possible to recognise systematic associations that support productivity and comprehension. In this work, we focus on the consistency between orthographic forms and meaning, and we investigate how the cognitive system may exploit it to process words. We take morphology as our case study, since it arguably represents one of the most notable examples of systematicity in form–meaning mapping. In a series of three experiments, we investigate the impact of form–meaning mapping in word processing by testing new consistency metrics as predictors of priming magnitude in primed lexical decision. In Experiment 1, we re-analyse data from five masked morphological priming studies and show that orthography–semantics–consistency explains independent variance in priming magnitude, suggesting that word semantics is accessed already at early stages of word processing and that crucially semantic access is constrained by word orthography. In Experiments 2 and 3, we investigate whether this pattern is replicated when looking at semantic priming. In Experiment 2, we show that orthography–semantics–consistency is not a viable predictor of priming magnitude with longer stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). However, in Experiment 3, we develop a new semantic consistency measure based on the semantic density of target neighbourhoods. This measure is shown to significantly predict independent variance in semantic priming effect. Overall, our results indicate that consistency measures provide crucial information for the understanding of word processing. Specifically, the dissociation between measures and priming paradigms shows that different priming conditions are associated with the activation of different semantic cohorts.


2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. MORITZ ◽  
K. MERSMANN ◽  
M. KLOSS ◽  
D. JACOBSEN ◽  
U. WILKE ◽  
...  

Background. A number of studies have suggested that indirect semantic priming is enhanced in thought-disordered schizophrenics. However, research on direct semantic priming has produced conflicting results. The aim of the present study was to resolve some of the ambiguities of previous findings.Methods. For the present study, 44 schizophrenic patients were split according to the presence of associative loosening into a positive thought-disordered (TD) and non-positive thought-disordered (NTD) group. Thirty healthy subjects and 36 psychiatric patients served as controls.Results. Schizophrenics displayed increased indirect semantic priming compared with psychiatric controls. When subtyping the sample, TD-patients exhibited significantly enhanced indirect semantic priming compared with healthy and psychiatric controls as well as NTD-patients. Overall slowing was found to be independent of priming effects. Medication, age and chronicity of the schizophrenic illness did not modulate priming.Conclusions. In line with Spitzer and Maher it is inferred that disinhibited semantic networks underlie formal thought disorder in schizophrenia. For future research, it would be appropriate to: employ indirect semantic priming rather than direct semantic priming conditions; and, pay more attention to potential moderators of the priming effect, most importantly, the prime display duration and the length of the stimulus onset asynchrony.


2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHIL D. LIU ◽  
CATHERINE McBRIDE-CHANG

ABSTRACTIn the present study, morphological structure processing of Chinese compounds was explored using a visual priming lexical decision task among 21 Hong Kong college students. Two compounding structures were compared. The first type was the subordinate, in which one morpheme modifies the other (e.g., 籃 球 [laam4 kau4, basket-ball, basketball]), similar to most English compounds (e.g., a snowman is a man made of snow and toothpaste is a paste for teeth; the second morpheme is the “head,” modified morpheme). The second type was the coordinative, in which both morphemes contribute equally to the meaning of the word. An example in Chinese is 花 草 (faa1 cou2, flower grass, i.e., plant). There are virtually no examples of this type in English, but an approximate equivalent phrase might be in and out, in which neither in nor out is more important than the other in comprising the expression. For the subordinate Chinese compound words, the same structure in prime and target facilitated the semantic priming effect, whereas for coordinative Chinese compound words, the same structure across prime and target inhibited the semantic priming effect. Results suggest that lexical processing of Chinese compounds is influenced by compounding structure processing.


Author(s):  
Demian Scherer ◽  
Dirk Wentura

Abstract. Recent theories assume a mutual facilitation in case of semantic overlap for concepts being activated simultaneously. We provide evidence for this claim using a semantic priming paradigm. To test for mutual facilitation of related concepts, a perceptual identification task was employed, presenting prime-target pairs briefly and masked, with an SOA of 0 ms (i.e., prime and target were presented concurrently, one above the other). Participants were instructed to identify the target. In Experiment 1, a cue defining the target was presented at stimulus onset, whereas in Experiment 2 the cue was not presented before the offset of stimuli. Accordingly, in Experiment 2, a post-cue task was merged with the perceptual identification task. We obtained significant semantic priming effects in both experiments. This result is compatible with the view that two concepts can both be activated in parallel and can mutually facilitate each other if they are related.


2003 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiko Nakamoto

Camac and Glucksberg reported there was no priming effect between constituent terms of a metaphor and argued that there was no prior similarity or association between the constituents. However, their study had several limitations. An important one was that they neglected the asymmetry of metaphor constituent terms. The purpose of this study is to replicate their experiment under the condition in which one of the constituents preceded the other. The experiment was conducted with Japanese participants using Japanese metaphoric sentences as stimuli. The results showed that the decision was facilitated if the vehicle served as prime and the topic served as target. In contrast, if the topic preceded the vehicle, no priming effect was found. These results are discussed in terms of the class inclusion model proposed earlier by Glucksberg and Keysar.


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