Perceptual effects of linguistic category priming: The Stapel and Semin (2007) paradigm revisited in twelve experiments (original) (raw)
Related papers
Tilburg University Perceptual effects of linguistic category priming
2015
Linguistic category priming is a novel paradigm to examine automatic influences of language on cognition (Semin, 2008). An initial article reported that priming abstract linguistic categories (adjectives) led to more global perceptual processing, whereas priming concrete linguistic categories (verbs) led to more local perceptual processing (Stapel & Semin, 2007). However, this report was compromised by data fabrication by the first author, so that it remains unclear whether or not linguistic category priming influences perceptual processing. To fill this gap in the literature, the present article reports 12 studies among Dutch and US samples examining the perceptual effects of linguistic category priming. The results yielded no evidence of linguistic category priming effects. These findings are discussed in relation to other research showing cultural variations in linguistic category priming effects (IJzerman, Saddlemyer, & Koole, 2014). The authors conclude by highlighting the importance of conducting and publishing replication research for achieving scientific progress.
The long and short of semantic priming effects in lexical decision
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 1997
described a theory of priming that predicts long-term effects for all forms of relatedness. This prediction is reconciled with previous failures to observe long-term semantic priming on the basis of 2 claims: (a) that previously used pairs share few semantic features and (b) that tasks typically used to study priming are not especially sensitive to semantic influences. The present experiments provide further support for these claims by demonstrating long-term semantic priming in the lexical-decision task when the stimuli and task are modified in a way that increases semantic involvement. However, the findings suggest that in addition to the mechanism advocated by Becker et al., a second mechanism is necessary to provide a complete account of semantic priming effects. Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) introduced the lexicaldecision task as a tool for learning more about the processes and mechanisms underlying semantic memory. In its original form, the task consisted of two letter strings simultaneously presented, with participants instructed to press one key if both stimuli were words, and another key if one or both of the stimuli were nonwords. Findings from that task indicated that correct "word** responses could be emitted faster if the stimuli consisted of a pair of semantically related words (e.g., sky-cloud) than if the stimuli consisted of apair of semantically unrelated words (e.g., car-cloud). This phenomenon is called semantic priming. In follow-up work, Meyer, Schvaneveldt, and Ruddy (1972) discovered two other facts about semantic priming. The first was that the priming observed in the original study was also observed with a procedure in which participants had to judge the lexical status of a single item that either was or was not preceded by a semantically related associate. The second discovery was that the magnitude of the semantic priming effect was strongly affected if items were presented between the prime and target. In their experiment, they found that the strong semantic priming effect observed when the prime and target were presented consecutively became
Measuring the Semantic Priming Effect Across Many Languages
2021
Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. These studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations in both healthy and clinical populations; however, they have suffered from several issues including generally low sample sizes and a lack of diversity in linguistic implementations. Here, we will test the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across ten languages by creating a large database of semantic priming values, based on an adaptive sampling procedure. Differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions (i.e., difference score confidence interval is greater than zero) will allow quantifying evidence for semantic priming, whereas improvements in model fit with the addition of a random intercept for language will provide support for variability in semantic priming across languages.
The concept of Lexical Priming in the context of language use 1
Corpus Linguistics is becoming an increasingly important part of language research; also interest in incorporating Corpus Linguistics into language teaching has become pronounced (cf. O'Keefe et al. 2007). Hoey (2005) has presented a theory that provides a set of rules that are possibly underpinning why Corpus Linguistics works as a way of analysing language: Lexical Priming. This theory can be seen as an explanation of why collocations exist. A listener will recognise a word more quickly when a related word is given (i.e. bodyheart). However, the theory is dependent on evidence of psycholinguistic and cognitive science claims. We cannot modify an approach to language description unless we are confident that we have sound evidence. Since Lexical Priming will have implications for how we deal with the results of computer-based language analysis, this article will show a range of arguments to support Lexical Priming as a linguistic theory and provide, to an extent, material to supplement Hoey's 2005 book.
Language Learning, 2016
Can recent second language (L2) exposure affect what we judge to be similar events? Using a priming paradigm, we manipulated whether native Swedish adult learners of L2 Spanish were primed to use path or manner during L2 descriptions of scenes depicting caused motion events (encoding phase). Subsequently, participants engaged in a nonverbal task, arranging events on the screen according to similarity (test phase). Path versus manner priming affected how participants judged event similarity during the test phase. The effects we find support the hypotheses that (a) speakers create or select ad hoc conceptual categories that are based on linguistic knowledge to carry out nonverbal tasks, and that (b) short‐term, recent L2 experience can affect this ad hoc process. These findings further suggest that cognition can flexibly draw on linguistic categories that have been implicitly highlighted during recent exposure.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded an Open Data badge. All data ar...
Semantic priming effects with and without perceptual awareness
2006
The present research was aimed to reply and extend several recent findings showing qualitatively different behavioral effects produced by words perceived with vs. without awareness. Participants made a semantic categorization task on a target that was preceded by a prime word belonging either to the same (20% of trials) or to a different category (80%). The prime was always presented
Semantic priming effects and lexical access in English as L3
Gragoatá
We report an experiment using a picture-naming task within the masked priming paradigm to examine lexical access in English as a third language. Participants were assigned to one of three groups: a control group, consisting of native speakers of English, and two experimental groups, one consisting of speakers of English as L2 and the other consisting of speakers of German as L2 and English as L3. Participants of the two experimental groups were native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. All participants performed a picture-naming task in English in which pictures were preceded by a masked prime word in the target language (English), in the native language (Brazilian Portuguese) or in the second language (German). The results indicate some interference from the participants’ second language in the production of their third language (English), favoring the view that lexical access of multilinguals is qualitatively different from that of bilinguals and monolinguals.----------------------...
2005
The present study investigates syntactic priming with children aged three and four. It examines whether children can be primed to use two alternative complex noun phrases (an adjective+noun structure and a noun+relative clause construction) to describe pictures, how susceptible children are to priming (in comparison to adult subjects) and which of the two alternative phrases is preferred according to a baseline condition (a bare noun prime). The priming task was a children's game, 'Snap', in which the picture cards were described. The participant heard the experimenter describe her card then described their own: the phrase they produced was thus primed from their comprehension. The main result was that children were primed to use both structures, although following the baseline condition the adjective+noun phrase was used at most, and at more than chance level, leading to the conclusion that this structure is the preferred. The results from the experiment with adults were only marginally significant in the items analysis only. Otherwise there were no significant effects with these participants; the experiment design was considered as a possible reason for this outcome. Since the adults were not reliably primed using this method, no firm conclusion as to the susceptibility of children to priming, compared to adults, could be made. There was however a strong priming effect among the child participants. vi
Memory and attention in lexical semantic priming: A literature review and analysis
M.S., Dept Psychology, University of Oregon, 2003
Semantic priming effects are extremely robust, with a tradition dating to the early 1970s, and have achieved an important status in cognitive psychology (Neely, 1991). In a typical version of this paradigm, subjects view a sequence of two or more words, and are asked to make a speeded response (word/nonword, semantic categorization, etc.) to the final word (the target). When the target is preceded by a word (prime) that is semantically related, response times (RT) are faster than when the prime and target words are unrelated.1 This difference in RT is referred to as the semantic priming effect. This paradigm has been an important tool for probing the nature of human memory and attention, as discussed in the present paper. Moreover, the significance of priming research reaches beyond the traditional boundaries of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology.2 In social psychology, for instance, semantic priming has been used to examine the nature of stereotypes: responses to social categories (race, gender, age) are elicited in different contexts to determine how “automatic” they are, and under what circumstances biases can be eliminated or reversed (Bargh, 1982; Bargh & Chartrand,1999).Clearly, semantic priming has been recognized as a powerful tool for investigating not only the nature of conceptual (semantic) processing, but also the development, organization, and stability of cognitive, affective, and social functions. However, despite these widespread applications, there is still a lack of consensus about the core mechanisms of semantic priming, and about the timing and relative importance of factors such as attention, prime awareness, and the relationship between nonsemantic associations (e.g., stimulus-response mappings) and semantic priming effects. Often, researchers have claimed to isolate different cognitive functions through manipulation of one or more of these variables. However, the lack of knowledge about basic mechanisms makes it hard to evaluate these claims. What can we conclude from differences in the time course or the size of semantic priming effects in different contexts, or across different populations? What do these effects imply about the structure of semantic representations, and about the functions of memory and attention in semantic access? Do semantic disorders reflect damage or disorganization of meaning representations, or difficulties in retrieval from memory? The aim of the present paper is to address these and other issues in a systematic review of the semantic priming literature. By understanding mechanisms of single-word semantic priming, it will be possible to evaluate more critically the results from studies using this paradigm, both within cognitive psychology and across diverse clinical, social, and psycholinguistic applications. Further, understanding the locus of semantic priming effects is important for its own sake, because it has direct implications for theories about the representation and organization of meaning in memory, and for understanding the cognitive and linguistic mechanisms of semantic processing.
Lexical activation of cross-language syntactic priming
Bilingualism, 2006
Cross-language (L1-to-L2) syntactic priming is the repetition of utterance structure from one language to another independently of meaning and has motivated models of language-shared representations of L1-L2 equivalent structures (Salamoura and Williams, submitted; Schoonbaert, Hartsuiker and Pickering, submitted). These models assume that the phenomenon is the result of residual activation of syntactic features encoding verb structural preferences and they, therefore, predict its initiation by a single verb prime (cf. Pickering and Branigan, 1998, for L1). This prediction was confirmed in a sentence completion task where we obtained syntactic priming from L1 Dutch to L2 English with Prepositional Object (PO) and Double Object (DO) datives upon presentation of single Dutch verbs that take either PO or DO only.