Semantic priming: On the role of awareness in visual word recognition in the absence of an expectancy

doi:10.1016/S1053-8100(02)00008-9

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 11, Issue 3, September 2002, Pages 402-422

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(02)00008-9 Get rights and content

Abstract

By hypothesis, awareness is involved in the modulation of feedback from semantics to the lexical level in the visual word recognition system. When subjects are aware of the fact that there are many related prime–target pairs in a semantic priming experiment, this knowledge is used to configure the system to feed activation back from semantics to the lexical level so as to facilitate processing. When subjects are unaware of this fact, the default set is maintained in which activation is not fed back from semantics to the lexical level so as to conserve limited resources. Qualitative differences in the pattern of data from two lexical decision experiments that employ masked priming are consistent with this hypothesis. Semantic context and stimulus quality interact when the prime is processed with awareness whereas these same two factors produce additive effects on RT when the prime is unlikely to have been processed with awareness. These experiments thus illustrate one way in which awareness (or lack thereof) affects the dynamics of visual word recognition.

Section snippets

Overview

It is well documented that semantic context and stimulus quality jointly affect the time to identify visually presented target words; the semantic context effect is larger when targets are degraded than when they are clear (e.g., Becker & Killion, 1977; Besner & Smith, 1992; Borowsky and Besner, 1991, Borowsky and Besner, 1993; Meyer, Schvaneveldt, & Ruddy, 1975). Moreover, this interaction is modulated by relatedness proportion (i.e., the proportion of word targets preceded by a related prime

Participants

Thirty-two University of Waterloo undergraduate students participated in a half-hour session. All participants spoke English as a first language and were assumed to have normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Each subject was paid six dollars.

Design

A 2 (semantic context: related vs unrelated) × 2 (stimulus quality: clear vs. degraded) repeated measures design was used. Both factors were within-subjects and trials from these conditions were randomly presented with the constraint that each of the four

Participants

Seventy-two University of Waterloo undergraduate students participated in a half-hour session. All participants spoke English as a first language and were assumed to have normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Each subject was paid six dollars.

Design

Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that the prime exposure duration was decreased from 150 to 34 ms. The backward mask appeared as soon as the prime display terminated. To hold prime–target SOA (i.e., 784 ms) constant, the duration of the

Experiment 3

The intent of Experiment 3 is to provide evidence against the possibility that the absence of a semantic context by stimulus quality interaction in Experiment 2 is due simply to masking per se. Experiment 3 employs the same masking parameters but uses repetition context instead of semantic context. According to Besner and colleagues’ two-stage account (see Besner & Swan, 1982) repetition context and stimulus quality exert their effects at the same stage of processing as the effect of stimulus

General discussion

The pattern of results observed across Experiments 1 and 2 is strikingly clear. In Experiment 1 semantic context and stimulus quality interact, whereas in Experiment 2 they are additive factors. The only difference between. Experiments 1 and 2 is the prime duration. In Experiment 1 the prime was presented for 150 ms before being masked, whereas in Experiment 2 the prime was presented for 34 ms before being masked. It is argued that subjects were aware of the prime in Experiment 1, but not in

Conclusion

Our starting point was the observation that, despite the widely accepted view that visual word recognition can occur without awareness, there has been little to no research that discusses how awareness affects the processing dynamics in the visual word recognition system. The present research explores one well-known finding in the word recognition literature, namely the semantic context by stimulus quality interaction, and frames it in terms of Besner and colleagues’ two-stage model. In terms

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Grant A0998 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to DB.

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View full text

Semantic priming: On the role of awareness in visual word recognition in the absence of an expectancy

Abstract

Section snippets

Overview

Participants

Design

Participants

Design

Experiment 3

General discussion

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour

Acta Psychologica

Journal of Memory and Language

Cognitive Psychology

Consciousness and Cognition

Cognition

Language, memory, and thought

The architecture of cognition

Semantic context effects in visual word recognition: An analysis of semantic strategies

Memory & Cognition

What do we really know about context effects?

Interaction of visual and cognitive effects in word recognition

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Models of visual word recognition: When obscuring the stimulus yields a clearer view

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Models of lexical access in visual word recognition

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology A

Visual word recognition across orthographies: On the interaction between context and degradation

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Visual word recognition: A multistage activation model

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Word recognition and consciousness

Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences

Unconscious perception: Attention, awareness, and control

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Primed lexical decision: Combined effects of the proportion of related prime–target pairs and the stimulus onset asynchrony of prime and target

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A