Semantic activation and letter search: Blocking or suppression?

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Volumn 63, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 580-594

  Cinel, Caterina ^a   Avons, Steve E ^a   Russo, Riccardo ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Associative priming; Decision; Letter search; Semantic activation

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ARTICLE; ATTENTION; DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; HUMAN; LEARNING; LINGUISTICS; MALE; METHODOLOGY; PHOTOSTIMULATION; PHYSIOLOGY; REACTION TIME; SEMANTICS; TIME; VISION;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ASSOCIATION LEARNING; ATTENTION; DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; PHOTIC STIMULATION; REACTION TIME; SEMANTICS; TIME FACTORS; VISUAL PERCEPTION; VOCABULARY; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 77949543392     PISSN: 17470218     EISSN: 17470226     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17470210903038966     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Becker, C. A. (1980). Semantic context effects in visual word recognition: An analysis of semantic strategies. Memory & Cognition, 8(6), 493-512.
2. Bodner, G. E., & Masson, M. E. J. (2003). Beyond spreading activation: An influence of relatedness proportion on masked semantic priming. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3, 645-692.
3. Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82(6), 407-428.
4. de Groot, A. M. B. (1984). 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, 36A, 253-280.
5. den Heyer, K., Briand, K., & Dannenbring, G. L. (1983). Strategic factors in a lexical-decision task-evidence for automatic and attention-driven processes. Memory & Cognition, 11, 374-381.
6. Friedrich, F. J., Henik, A., & Tzelgov, J. (1991). Automatic processes in lexical access and spreading activation. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 17(33), 792-806.
7. Heil, M., Rolke, B., & Pecchinenda, A. (2004). Automatic semantic activation is no myth. Semantic context effects on the N400 in the letter- search task in the absence of response time effects. Psychological Science, 15, 852-857.
8. Henik, A., Friedrich, F. J., & Kellogg, W. (1983). The dependence of semantic relatedness effects upon prime processing. Memory & Cognition, 11,366-373.
9. Henik, A., Friedrich, F. J., Tzelgov, J., & Tramer, S. (1994). Capacity demands of automatic processes in semantic priming. Memory & Cognition, 22, 157-168.
10. Hutchison, K. A., & Bosco, F. A. (2007). Congruency effects in the letter search task: Semantic activation in the absence of priming. Memory & Cognition, 35,514-525.
11. Hutchison, K. A., Neely, J. H., & Johnson, J. D. (2001). With great expectations can two "wrong"s prime a "right"? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 1451-1463.
12. Kaye, D. B., & Brown, S. W. (1985). Levels and speed of processing effects on word analysis. Memory & Cognition, 13, 425-434.
13. Koriat, A. (1981). Semantic facilitation in lexical decision as a function of prime-target association. Memory & Cognition, 9, 587-598.
14. Kuper, K., & Heil, M. (2009). Electrophysiology reveals semantic priming at a short SOA irrespective of depth of prime processing. Neuroscience Letters, 453, 107-111.
15. Mari-Beffa, P., Valdes, P., Cullen, D. J. D., Catena, A., & Houghton, G. (2005). ERP analyses of task effects on semantic processing from words. Cognitive Brain Research, 23, 293-305.
16. Masson, M. E. J. (1995). A distributed model of semantic priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 25, 776-794.
17. Maxfield, L. M. (1997). Attention and semantic priming: A review of prime task effects. Consciousness and Cognition, 6, 204-218.
18. McNamara, T. P. (2005). Semantic priming: Perspectives from memory and word recognition. New York: Psychology Press.
19. Moss, H., & Older, L. (1996). Birkbeck word association norms. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
20. Neely, J. H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106, 226-254.
21. Neely, J. H. (1991). Semantic priming effects in visual word recognition: A selective review of current findings and theories. In D. Besner & G. W. Humphreys (Eds.), Basic processes in reading: Visual word recognition (pp. 264-336). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
22. Neely, J. H., Keefe, D. E., & Ross, K. L. (1989). Semantic context effects on visual word processing: A hybrid prospective/retrospective processing theory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 24, pp. 207-248). New York: Academic Press.
23. Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Schreiber, T. A. (2004). The University of South Florida word association, rhyme, and fragment norms. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 402-407.
24. Otsuka, S., & Kawaguchi, J. (2007). Divided attention modulates semantic activation: Evidence from a non-letter-level prime task. Memory & Cognition, 35, 2001-2011.
25. Pelli, D. G. (1997). The VideoToolbox software for visual psychophysics: Transforming numbers into movies. Spatial Vision, 4, 437-442.
26. Plaut, D. C. (1995). Semantic and associative priming in a distributed attractor network. Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 37-42). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
27. Posner, M. I., & Snyder, C. R. R. (1975). Facilitation and inhibition in the processing of signals. Attention and Performance V (pp. 669-681). New York: New York Press.
28. Seidenberg, M. S., Waters, G., Sanders, M., & Langer, P. (1984). Pre- and postlexical loci of contextual effects on word recognition. Memory and Cognition, 12, 315-328.
29. Smith, M. C. (1979). Contextual facilitation in a letter search task depends on how the prime is processed. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 5, 239-251.
30. Smith, M. C., Bentin, S., & Spalek, T. M. (2001). Attention constraints of semantic activation during visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 1289-1298.
31. Smith, M. C., Theodor, L., & Franklin, P. E. (1983). The relationship between contextual facilitation and depth of processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 9, 697-712.
32. Stolz, J. A., & Besner, D. (1996). Role of set in visual word recognition: Activation and activation blocking as nonautomatic processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 1166-1177.
33. Stolz, J. A., & Besner, D. (1998). Levels of representation in visual word recognition: A dissociation between morphological and semantic processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 1642-1645.
34. Tse, C.-S., & Neely, J. H. (2007). Semantic priming from letter-searched primes occurs for low- but not high-frequency targets: Automatic semantic access may not be a myth. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 33, 1143-1161.
35. Tweedy, J. R., Lapinski, R., & Schvaneveldt, R. (1977). Semantic context effects on word recognition: Influence of varying the proportion of items presented in an appropriate context. Memory & Cognition, 5, 84-89.