Aging and the Semantic Priming of Lexical Decisions (original) (raw)
Related papers
Automatic and attentional priming in young and older adults: Reevaluation of the two-process model
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1992
Three experiments addressed the distinction between automatic and attentional mechanisms underlying semantic priming effects by factorially crossing prime-target relatedness, expectancy, and SOA in a task (pronunciation) that minimized postlexical checking processes. Also, possible age-related (young vs. older adults) differences in the automatic and attentional mechanisms were addressed. Across all experiments there was evidence of a Relatedness x Expectancy x SOA interaction, which is inconsistent with the notion of independent automatic and attentional mechanisms in semantic priming and the notion of a self-encapsulated modular lexicon. The results also indicated age-related differences in the build-up of the expectancy effect across SOAs when the prime was visually available for only 200 ms, independently of the prime-target SOA (Experiments 1 and 3), but not when the prime was visually available throughout the SOA (Experiment 2).
General slowing in semantic priming and word recognition
Psychology and Aging, 1992
Analyses of lexical decision studies revealed that (a) older (O) adults' mean semantic priming effect was 1.44 times that of younger (Y) adults, (b) regression lines describing the relations between older and younger adults' latencies in related (O = 1.54 Y-112) and unrelated conditions (O = 1.50 Y-93) were not significantly different, and (c) that there was a proportional relation between older and younger adults' priming effects (O = 1.48 Y -2). Analyses of word-naming studies yielded similar results. Analyses of delayed pronunciation data revealed that word recognition was 1.47 times slower in older adults, whereas older adults' output processes were only 1.26 times slower. Overall, analyses of whole latencies and durations of component processes provide converging evidence for a general slowing factor of approximately 1.5 for lexical information processing.
The Spanish journal of psychology, 2011
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.
We examined the effects of semantic priming of attention on two sequentially presented visuomotor tasks, traffic judgments and saccadic adaptation. Priming was accomplished with the scrambled sentence task: participants formed meaningful sentences from a list of words where a word denoting wide attention focus was involved. The results showed that semantic priming influenced positively saccade adaptation (its' benefit increased) while it attenuated visuomotor performance in the traffic task (RT of hand movements increased). We found the effects of priming on both tasks' performance to be comparable in young and older participants. It was suggested that semantic priming effect on visuomotor tasks depended on the cognitive resources which were needful as for the priming as for the primed task.
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 1999
Two experiments are reported that explore the influence of strength of the prime-target relationship on the observed priming effects in young, healthy old, and individuals diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT). In Experiment 1, participants were auditorily presented primes (FURNITURE) and after varying delays presented visual targets that were (1) high-strength related (e.g., SOFA), (2) low-strength related (e.g., RUG), or (3) unrelated control words (e.g., COW or DEER). The results indicated that the DAT individuals produced relatively larger priming effects than both the young and the healthy old, but these data could be accommodated by increases in effect size due to general slowing of response latencies. In Experiment 2, the same cross-modal priming paradigm was used with ambiguous words presented as primes (e.g., BANK) and either high-dominant (e.g., MONEY) or low-dominant (e.g., RIVER) words as targets. The results of Experiment 2 produced a qualitatively distinct pattern of priming that indicated DAT individuals only produced priming for high-dominant targets and not for low-dominant targets, whereas, the healthy control groups produced equivalent priming for both high-and low-dominant targets. The discussion focuses on the implication that these results have for the interpretation of semantic priming effects, in general, along with implications for the apparent semantic memory loss in DAT individuals. (JINS, 1999, 5, 626-640.)
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1989
In semantic priming paradigms for lexical decisions, the probability that a word target is semantically related to its prime (the relatedness proportion) has been confounded with the probability that a target is a nonword, given that it is unrelated to its prime (the nonword ratio). This study unconfounded these two probabilities in a lexical decision task with category names as primes and with high-and low-dominance exemplars as targets. Semantic priming for highdominance exemplars was modulated by the relatedness proportion and, to a lesser degree, by the nonword ratio. However, the nonword ratio exerted a stronger influence than did the relatedness proportion on semantic priming for low-dominance exemplars and on the nonword facilitation effect (i.e., the superiority in performance for nonword targets that follow a category name rather than a neutral XXX prime). These results suggest that semantic priming for lexical decisions is affected by both a prospective prime-generated expectancy, modulated by the relatedness proportion, and a retrospective target/prime semantic matching process, modulated by the nonword ratio. People are typically faster and more accurate in responding to a target word when it is accompanied by or immediately preceded by a semantically related priming word, relative to an unrelated priming word (e.g,, Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971; Neely, 1976). This semantic priming effect has most often been studied in the lexical decision task, in which subjects indicate whether a target letter string (e.g., robin or tark) is a word or a nonword. The relatedness proportion effect is the finding that semantic priming increases in magnitude with increases in the proportion of related word-prime/word-target trials-a proportion hereafter referred to as the relatedness proportion. The relatedness proportion effect is very robust and has been obtained across a wide range of procedural variations in the lexical decision task (de Groot,
Aging Influences the Neural Correlates of Lexical Decision but Not Automatic Semantic Priming
Cerebral Cortex, 2009
Human behavioral data indicate that older adults are slower to perform lexical decisions (LDs) than young adults but show similar reaction time gains when these decisions are primed semantically. The present study explored the functional neuroanatomic bases of these frequently observed behavioral findings. Young and older groups completed unprimed and primed LD tasks while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was recorded, using a fully randomized trial design paralleling those used in behavioral research. Results from the unprimed task found that age-related slowing of LD was associated with decreased activation in perceptual extrastriate regions and increased activation in regions associated with higher level linguistic processes, including prefrontal cortex. In contrast to these age-related changes in brain activation, the older group showed a preserved pattern of fMRI decreases in inferior temporal cortex when LD was primed semantically. These findings provide evidence that older adults' LD abilities benefit from contexts that reduce the need for frontally mediated strategic processes and capitalize on the continued sensitivity of inferior temporal cortex to automatic semantic processes in aging.
Attentional modulation of masked repetition and categorical priming in young and older adults
Cognition, 2007
Three experiments examined the eVects of temporal attention and aging on masked repetition and categorical priming for numbers and words. Participants' temporal attention was manipulated by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (i.e., constant or variable SOA). In Experiment 1, participants performed a parity judgment task and a lexical decision task in which categorical priming and repetition priming were, respectively, tested. Experiment 2 used a semantic categorization task testing categorical priming. In Experiment 3, repetition and categorical priming were tested in the same semantic categorization task with the same stimuli. The results of the three experiments showed that masked repetition priming is insensitive to manipulations of temporal attention whereas categorical priming is. Furthermore, no diVerences were found between young and older adults in repetition priming eVects, again contrasting with the categorical priming results for which older adults were more sensitive to attentional manipulations than young adults. (L. Fabre).
Mediated Priming in Younger and Older Adults
Experimental Aging Research, 1999
T his paper reports the result of a lexical decision experiment in which the primes were either directly related to their targets, mediated, or unrelated. M ediated primes are indirectly related to their targets through a single connecting link (e.g., PAST URE COW M ILK). Older and younger adult subjects responded to each letter string in a continuous lexical decision task, deciding whether each string was a word or a nonword. T he results indicated that both younger and older subjects bene ted from the mediated primes, as well as from the directly related primes. T he results are discussed in relation to issues of age changes in processing speed.
Semantic priming in the lexical decision task: Roles of prospec-tive prime-generated expectancies an
1989
In semantic priming paradigms for lexical decisions, the probability that a word target is semantically related to its prime (the relatedness proportion) has been confounded with the probability that a target is a nonword, given that it is unrelated to its prime (the nonword ratio). This study unconfounded these two probabilities in a lexical decision task with category names as primes and with high-and low-dominance exemplars as targets. Semantic priming for highdominance exemplars was modulated by the relatedness proportion and, to a lesser degree, by the nonword ratio. However, the nonword ratio exerted a stronger influence than did the relatedness proportion on semantic priming for low-dominance exemplars and on the nonword facilitation effect (i.e., the superiority in performance for nonword targets that follow a category name rather than a neutral XXX prime). These results suggest that semantic priming for lexical decisions is affected by both a prospective prime-generated expectancy, modulated by the relatedness proportion, and a retrospective target/prime semantic matching process, modulated by the nonword ratio. People are typically faster and more accurate in responding to a target word when it is accompanied by or immediately preceded by a semantically related priming word, relative to an unrelated priming word (e.g,, Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971; Neely, 1976). This semantic priming effect has most often been studied in the lexical decision task, in which subjects indicate whether a target letter string (e.g., robin or tark) is a word or a nonword. The relatedness proportion effect is the finding that semantic priming increases in magnitude with increases in the proportion of related word-prime/word-target trials-a proportion hereafter referred to as the relatedness proportion. The relatedness proportion effect is very robust and has been obtained across a wide range of procedural variations in the lexical decision task (de Groot,