Abstract
Ss classified visually presented verbal units into the categories “in your vocabulary” or “not in your vocabulary.” The primary concern of the experiment was to determine if making a prior decision on a given item affects the latency of a subsequent lexical decision for the same item. Words of both high and low frequency showed a systematic reduction in the latency of a lexical decision as a consequence of prior decisions (priming) but did not show any reduction due to nonspecific practice effects. Nonwords showed no priming effect but did show shorter latencies due to nonspecific practice. The results also indicated that many (at least 36) words can be in the primed state simultaneously and that the effect persists for at least 10 min. The general interpretation was that priming produces an alteration in the representation of a word in memory and can facilitate the terminal portion of the memory search process which is assumed to be random.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Fishier, I., & Juola, J. F. Effects of repeated tests on recognition time for information in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1971, 91, 54–58.
Meyer, D. E., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1971, 90, 227–234.
Meyer, D. E., Schvaneveldt, R. W., & Ruddy, M. G. Activation of lexical memory. Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis, Missouri, November 1972.
Morton, J. The effects of context on the visual duration threshold for words. British Journal of Psychology, 1964, 55, 165–180.
Rubenstein, H. R., Garfield, L., & Millikan, J. A. Homographic entries in the internal lexicon. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 1970, 9,487–494.
Schvaneveldt, R. W., & Meyer, D. E. Retrieval and comparison processes in semantic memory. Paper presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Attention and Performance, Boulder, Colorado, August 16–21, 1971.
Stanners, R. F., & Forbach, G. B. Analysis of letter strings in word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1973, 98, 31–35.
Stanners, R. F., Forbach, G. B., & Headley, D. B. Decision and search processes in word-nonword classification. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1971, 90, 45–50.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
The present experiment was partially supported by funds from the Oklahoma State University Research Foundation.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Forbach, G.B., Stanners, R.F. & Hochhaus, L. Repetition and practice effects in a lexical decision task. Memory & Cognition 2, 337–339 (1974). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209005
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209005