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Integrative priming occurs rapidly and uncontrollably during lexical processing

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Estes, Zachary and Jones, Lara L. . (2009) Integrative priming occurs rapidly and uncontrollably during lexical processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol.138 (No.1). pp. 112-130. ISSN 0096-3445

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0014677

Abstract

Lexical priming, whereby a prime word facilitates recognition of a related target word (e.g., nurse ? doctor), is typically attributed to association strength, semantic similarity, or compound familiarity. Here, the authors demonstrate a novel type of lexical priming that occurs among unassociated, dissimilar, and unfamiliar concepts (e.g., horse ? doctor). Specifically, integrative priming occurs when a prime word can be easily integrated with a target word to create a unitary representation. Across several manipulations of timing (stimulus onset asynchrony) and list context (relatedness proportion), lexical decisions for the target word were facilitated when it could be integrated with the prime word. Moreover, integrative priming was dissociated from both associative priming and semantic priming but was comparable in terms of both prevalence (across participants) and magnitude (within participants). This observation of integrative priming challenges present models of lexical priming, such as spreading activation, distributed representation, expectancy, episodic retrieval, and compound cue models. The authors suggest that integrative priming may be explained by a role activation model of relational integration.

Item Type:

Journal Article

Subjects:

B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology

Divisions:

Faculty of Science > Psychology

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):

Lexical grammar, Priming (psychology), Word recognition

Journal or Publication Title:

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Publisher:

American Psychological Association

ISSN:

0096-3445

Official Date:

February 2009

Dates:

Date	Event
February 2009	Published

Volume:

Vol.138

Number:

No.1

Number of Pages:

Page Range:

pp. 112-130

Identification Number:

10.1037/a0014677

Status:

Peer Reviewed

Access rights to Published version:

Open Access

Version or Related Resource:

Portions of this research were presented at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (Houston, TX).

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