Depth of spreading activation revisited: Semantic mediated priming occurs in lexical decisions

Abstract

Balota and Lorch 1986 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 336–345 have shown that semantic mediated priming (e.g., from “lion” to “stripes” via “tiger”) occurs in naming but not in lexical decisions (see also de Groot 1983, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 417–436). Several investigators have hypothesized that semantic mediated priming does not appear in lexical decisions because subjects attempt to expedite the binary lexical decision by engaging in postretrieval relatedness checking: Subjects are biased to respond “word” when a target is related to its prime and “nonword” when a target is unrelated to its prime. Because the relation between mediated pairs is usually quite subtle, subjects are biased to respond “nonword” for these items, which obscures facilitation that may be occurring from spreading activation. This account suggests that mediated priming will appear in lexical decisions if (a) directly related words (e.g., “lion-tiger”) are not included on test lists or (b) a task is used that discourages relatedness checking. Experiment 1 tested the first possibility and Experiment 2 tested the second. Both experiments demonstrated statistically reliable semantic mediated priming in lexical decisions. Two additional experiments showed that mediated priming was smaller than direct priming and that it generalized to new materials. These results support spreading-activation theories of retrieval but provide evidence against several “nonspreading-activation” theories.