Semantic interpretability does not influence masked priming effects

Tseng, Hayley; Lindsay, Shane; Davis, Colin J.

Abstract

Much of the recent masked nonword priming literature demonstrates no difference in priming between affixed and non-affixed nonword primes (e.g., maskity-MASK vs. maskond-MASK). A possible explanation for the absence of a difference is that studies have used affixed primes which were semantically uninterpretable. Therefore, this explanation indicates semantic interpretability plays a fundamental role in masked priming. To test this account, we conducted an experiment using the masked priming paradigm in the lexical decision task. We compared responses with targets which were preceded by one of four primes types: (1) interpretable affixed nonwords (e.g., maskless-MASK), (2) uninterpretable affixed nonwords (e.g., maskity-MASK), (3) non-affixed nonwords (e.g., maskond-MASK), and (4) unrelated words (e.g., tubeful-MASK). Our results follow the trend of finding no difference between affixed and non-affixed primes. Critically, however, we observed no difference in priming between uninterpretable and interpretable affixed primes. Thus, our results suggest that semantic interpretability does not influence masked priming.

Citation

Tseng, H., Lindsay, S., & Davis, C. J. (2020). Semantic interpretability does not influence masked priming effects. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(6), 856-867. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819896766

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 24, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Dec 7, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Deposit Date: Dec 21, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 23, 2019
• Journal: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
• Print ISSN: 1747-0218
• Electronic ISSN: 1747-0226
• Publisher: SAGE Publications (UK and US)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 73
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 856-867
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819896766
• Keywords: Semantic interpretability; Masked priming; Morphological processing; Visual word recognition; Lexical decision
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3331300
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1747021819896766