Automatic and strategic priming in recognition

Abstract

Automatic and strategic components of priming in recognition were investigated in four experiments. In each experiment, subjects studied unrelated sentences and then were presented a test list of words for recognition. In the first experiment, the probability that a priming pair (two words from the same sentence tested sequentially) occurred in the test list had no effect on the size of the facilitation of response to the second word of the pair. This shows that the priming effect satisfies one of the criteria required of an automatic process. The other three experiments investigated the time course of processing by manipulating the time between the onsets of the prime word and the target word. In Experiment 2, it was found that facilitation (prime and target from the same sentence) occurred by 150 milliseconds, but inhibition (prime and target from different sentences) did not occur until later in processing. These results show that priming satisfies the other two criteria for an automatic process, rapid onset of facilitation and no inhibition until later in processing. In the third and fourth experiments, strategic facilitation took longer than 700 milliseconds to be produced but inhibition was produced faster than 700 milliseconds. These results support the two-factor theory of Posner and Snyder. Implications for models of discourse processing are also discussed.