Attention Constraints of Semantic Activation During Visual Word Recognition

The reduction of semantic priming following letter search of the prime suggests that semantic activation can be blocked if attention is allocated to the letter level during word processing. Is this true even for the very fast-acting component of semantic activation? To test this, the authors explore...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition memory, and cognition, 2001-09, Vol.27 (5), p.1289-1298
Main Authors: Smith, Marilyn C, Bentin, Shlomo, Spalek, Thomas M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Language
Lexical Decision
Male
Mental Recall
Paired-Associate Learning
Production and perception of written language
Psycholinguistics
Psychological tests
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading
Semantic Priming
Semantics
Stimulus Onset
Verbal Learning
Visual Perception
Word Recognition
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The reduction of semantic priming following letter search of the prime suggests that semantic activation can be blocked if attention is allocated to the letter level during word processing. Is this true even for the very fast-acting component of semantic activation? To test this, the authors explored semantic priming of lexical decision at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of either 200 or 1000 ms. Following semantic prime processing, priming occurred at both SOAs. In contrast, no priming occurred at the long SOA following letter-level processing. Of greatest interest, at the short SOA there was priming following the less demanding consonant/vowel task but not following the more attention-demanding letter search task. Hence, semantic activation can occur even when attention is directed to the letter level, provided there are sufficient resources to support this activation. The authors conclude that the default setting during word recognition is for fast-acting activation of the semantic system.
ISSN:0278-7393
1939-1285
DOI:10.1037/0278-7393.27.5.1289