TY - JOUR
T1 - The density constraint on form-priming in the naming task
T2 - interference effects from a masked prime
AU - Forster, Kenneth I.
AU - Davis, Christopher
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper is an expanded version of a paper delivered by the first author at the 14th Australian Experimental Psychology Conference, University of New England, Armidale, N.S.W., May 1987. The research was supported by a grant to the first author from the Australian Research Grants Committee, and was carried out at Monash University. We record our gratitude to Csaba Veres for his assistance in running the experiments. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Kenneth Forster, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; email: kforster @ arizvax.bitnet.
PY - 1991/2
Y1 - 1991/2
N2 - Form-priming effects occur when the prime has similar but nonidentical orthographic form to the target (e.g., mature-NATURE). In visual word recognition tasks, strong facilitatory effects of form similarity are readily obtained when the prime is heavily masked and cannot be reported. In the lexical decision task, this effect is subject to a special density constraint, namely, that form-priming only occurs for words that have few orthographic neighbors and hence are located in low-density regions of the lexicon. However, it has been reported that no such constraint applies to the naming task, which shows strong priming for short words regardless of the neighborhood density. It is shown that performance in the naming task is subject to a special Stroop-like interference effect when the prime and target begin with different onsets. When this interference effect is held constant by matching onsets across conditions, the naming task exhibits the same properties as the lexical decision task. Further analysis shows that this onset effect is not obtained for all words. Words from low-density regions show no such effect, nor do low-frequency words or irregular words. These effects are interpreted in terms of response competition arising from a nonlexically mediated naming response to the prime. When a modified naming task is used (name-if-a-word), which requires the inhibition of all naming responses until lexical processing is completed, no onset effect is obtained.
AB - Form-priming effects occur when the prime has similar but nonidentical orthographic form to the target (e.g., mature-NATURE). In visual word recognition tasks, strong facilitatory effects of form similarity are readily obtained when the prime is heavily masked and cannot be reported. In the lexical decision task, this effect is subject to a special density constraint, namely, that form-priming only occurs for words that have few orthographic neighbors and hence are located in low-density regions of the lexicon. However, it has been reported that no such constraint applies to the naming task, which shows strong priming for short words regardless of the neighborhood density. It is shown that performance in the naming task is subject to a special Stroop-like interference effect when the prime and target begin with different onsets. When this interference effect is held constant by matching onsets across conditions, the naming task exhibits the same properties as the lexical decision task. Further analysis shows that this onset effect is not obtained for all words. Words from low-density regions show no such effect, nor do low-frequency words or irregular words. These effects are interpreted in terms of response competition arising from a nonlexically mediated naming response to the prime. When a modified naming task is used (name-if-a-word), which requires the inhibition of all naming responses until lexical processing is completed, no onset effect is obtained.
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U2 - 10.1016/0749-596X(91)90008-8
DO - 10.1016/0749-596X(91)90008-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0001872946
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 30
SP - 1
EP - 25
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
IS - 1
ER -