Spreading activation versus compound cue accounts of priming: mediated priming revisited.

Abstract

Spreading activation theories and compound cue theories have both been proposed as accounts of priming phenomena. According to spreading activation theories, the amount of activation that spreads between a prime and a target should be a function of the number of mediating links between the prime and target in a semantic network and the strengths of those links. The amount of activation should determine the amount of facilitation given by a prime to a target in lexical decision. To predict the amount of facilitation, it is necessary to measure the associative links between prime and target in memory. Free-association production probability has been the variable chosen in previous research for this measurement. However, in 3 experiments, the authors show priming effects that free-association production probabilities cannot easily predict. Instead, they argue that amount of priming depends on the familiarity of the prime and target as a compound, where the compound is formed by the simultaneous presence of the prime and target in short-term memory as a test item.