Abstract
A meta-analysis of 26 studies indicated that automatic semantic priming can occur without association. Priming did not vary substantially with differences in variables that affect automatic versus strategic processing, such as time spent processing the prime and target, relationship proportion, and task (except that average effects were smaller in the naming task). Although category coordinates were investigated in the majority of studies, synonyms, antonyms, and script relations also demonstrated priming; functional relations showed greater priming, and essential and perceptual relations showed less. The average effect size for semantic priming was smaller than that for associative priming, suggesting that there is an “associative boost” from adding an associative relationship to a semantic one. The implications of these findings for the modularity thesis and for models of semantic priming are discussed.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
*Abernethy, M., &Coney, J. (1996). Semantic category priming in the left cerebral hemisphere.Neuropsychologia,34, 339–350.
*Anderson, J. R. (1983).The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
*Balota, D. A. (1983). Automatic semantic activation and episodic memory encoding.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,22, 88–104.
*Balota, D. A., &Chumbley, J. I. (1984). Are lexical decisions a good measure of lexical access? The role of word frequency in the neglected decision stage.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,10, 340–357.
*Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems.Behavioral & Brain Sciences,22, 577–660.
*Boronat, C. B. (1998).The relationship of attention and semantic priming: Semantic priming is conditionally automatic. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
*Burgess, C. (1998). From simple associations to the building blocks of language: Modeling meaning in memory with the HAL model.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers,30, 188–198.
*Carroll, M., &Kirsner, K. (1982). Context and repetition effects in lexical decision and recognition memory.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,21, 55–69.
*Chertkow, H., Bub, D., &Seidenberg, M. (1989). Priming and semantic memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease.Brain & Language,36, 420–466.
*Chiarello, C., Burgess, C., Richards, L., &Pollock, A. (1990). Semantic and associative priming in the cerebral hemispheres: Some words do, some words don’t … Sometimes, some places.Brain & Language,38, 75–104.
*Chiarello, C., &Richards, L. (1992). Another look at categorical priming in the cerebral hemispheres.Neuropsychologia,30, 381–392.
*Cohen, J. (1977).Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. New York: Academic Press.
*Collins, A. M., &Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing.Psychological Review,82, 407–428.
*Collins, A. M., &Quillian, M. R. (1969). Retrieval time from semantic memory.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,8, 240–248.
*Dagenbach, D., Horst, S., &Carr, T. H. (1990). Adding new information to semantic memory: How much learning is enough to produce automatic priming?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,16, 581–591.
*DeGroot, A. M. B. (1984). Primed lexical decision: Combined effects of the proportion of related prime-target pairs and the stimulus-onset asynchrony of prime and target.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,36A, 253–280.
*de Mornay Davies, P. (1998). Automatic semantic priming: The contribution of lexical- and semantic-level processes.European Journal of Cognitive Psychology,10, 389–412.
*Djojomihardjo, M. (1997).Association: How does it differ from semantic relatedness? Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio University.
*Durgunoğlu, A. Y., &Neely, J. H. (1987). On obtaining episodic priming in a lexical decision task following paired-associate learning.Journal of Experimental Psychology,13, 206–222.
*Fischler, I. (1977). Semantic facilitation without association in a lexical decision task.Memory & Cognition,5, 335–339.
*Fodor, J. A. (1983).The modularity of mind: An essay on faculty psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
*Forster, K. I. (1979). Levels of processing and the structure of the language processor. In W. E. Cooper & E. C. T. Walker (Eds.),Sentence processing: Psycholinguistic studies presented to Merrill Garrett (pp. 257–287). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
*Glass, G. V., McGaw, B., &Smith, M. L. (1981).Meta-analysis in social research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
*Hedges, L. V., &Olkin, I. (1985).Statistical methods for meta-analysis. New York: Academic Press.
*Henik, A., Friedrich, F. J., &Kellogg, W. A. (1983). The dependence of semantic relatedness effects upon prime processing.Memory & Cognition,11, 366–373.
*Hess, D. J., Foss, D. J., &Carroll, P. (1995). Effects of global and local context on lexical processing during language comprehension.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,124. 62–82.
*Hodgson, J. M. (1991). Informational constraints on pre-lexical priming.Language & Cognitive Processes,6, 169–205.
*Huttenlocher, J., &Kubicek, L. (1983). The source of relatedness effects on naming latency.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,9, 486–496.
*Kacinik, N.A. (1998).The prime task effect: An investigation of semantic vs. associative priming and the activation blocking account. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Western Ontario.
*Keefe, D. E., &Neely, J. H. (1990). Semantic priming in the pronunciation task: The role of prospective prime-generated expectancies.Memory & Cognition,18, 289–298.
*Keil, F. C. (1989).Concepts, kinds, and conceptual development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
*Kruesi, E. E. (1979).The role of associations and semantic similarity in facilitating the lexical decision. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California, Berkeley.
*Landauer, T. K. (1999). Latent semantic analysis (LSA), a disembodied learning machine, acquires human word meaning vicariously from language alone.Behavioral & Brain Sciences,22, 624–625.
*Landauer, T. K., &Dumais, S. T. (1997). A solution to Plato’s problem: The latent semantic analysis theory of acquisition, induction, and representation of knowledge.Psychological Bulletin,104, 211–240.
*Light, R. J., &Pillemer, D. B. (1984).Summing up: The science of reviewing research. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
*Logan, G. D. (1988). Toward an instance theory of automatization.Psychological Review,95, 492–527.
*Lucas, M. (1999). Context effects in lexical access: A meta-analysis.Memory & Cognition,27, 385–398.
*Lucas, M. (in press). Essential and perceptual attributes of words in reflective and on-line processing.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
*Lund, K., &Burgess, C. (1996). Producing high-dimensional semantic spaces from lexical co-occurrence.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers,28, 203–208.
*Lund, K., Burgess, C., &Atchley, R. A. (1995). Semantic and associative priming in high-dimensional semantic space. InProceedings of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 660–665). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
*Masson, M. E. J. (1995). A distributed memory model of semantic priming.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 3–23.
*McKoon, G., &Ratcliff, R. (1979). Priming in episodic and semantic memory.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,18, 463–480.
*McKoon, G., &Ratcliff, R. (1986). Automatic activation of episodic information in a semantic memory task.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,12, 108–115.
*McKoon, G., &Ratcliff, R. (1989). Assessing the occurrence of elaborative inference with recognition: Compatibility checking vs. compound cue theory.Journal of Memory & Language,28, 547–563.
*McKoon, G., &Ratcliff, R. (1992). Spreading activation versus compound cue accounts of priming: Mediated priming revisited.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,18, 1155–1172.
McNamara, T. P. (1992). Priming and constraints it places on theories of memory and retrieval.Psychological Review,99, 650–662.
*McNamara, T. P., &Altarriba, J. (1988). Depth of spreading activation revisited: Semantic mediated priming occurs in lexical decisions.Journal of Memory & Language,27, 545–559.
*McRae, K., &Boisvert, S. (1998). Automatic semantic similarity priming.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,24, 558–572.
*McRae, K., de Sa, V. R., &Seidenberg, M. S. (1997). On the nature and scope of featural representations of word meaning.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,126, 99–130.
*Meyer, D. E., &Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations.Journal of Experimental Psychology,90, 227–234.
*Meyer, D. E., Schvaneveldt, R. W., &Ruddy, M. G. (1975). Loci of contextual effects in visual word recognition. In P. M. A. Rabbitt & S. Dornic (Eds.),Attention and performance V (pp. 98–118). New York: Academic Press.
*Moss, H. E., Hare, M. L., Day, P., &Tyler, L. K. (1994). A distributed memory model of the associative boost in priming.Connection Science,6, 413–427.
Moss, H. E., McCormick, S. F., &Tyler, L. K. (1997). The time course of activation of semantic information during spoken word recognition.Language & Cognitive Processes,12, 698–731.
*Moss, H. E., Ostrin, R. K., Tyler, L. K., &Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1995). Accessing different types of lexical semantic information: Evidence from priming.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 863–883.
*Moss, H. E., Tyler, L. K., Hodges, J. R., &Patterson, K. (1995). Exploring the loss of semantic memory in semantic dementia: Evidence from a primed monitoring study.Neuropsychology,9, 16–26.
*Moss, H. E., Tyler, L. K., &Jennings, F. (1997). When leopards lose their spots: Knowledge of visual properties in category-specific deficits for living things.Cognitive Neuropsychology,14, 901–950.
*Murphy, G. L., &Medin, D. L. (1985). The role of theories in conceptual coherence.Psychological Review,92, 289–316.
*Nation, K., &Snowling, M. J. (1999). Developmental differences in sensitivity to semantic relations among good and poor comprehenders: Evidence from semantic priming.Cognition,70, B1-B13.
*Neely, J. H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,106, 226–254.
*Neely, J. H. (1991). Semantic priming effects in visual word recognition: A selective review of current findings and theories. In D. Besner & G. W. Humphreys (Eds.), InBasic processes in reading: Visual word recognition (pp. 264–336). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
*Neely, J. H., &Durgunoğlu, A. Y. (1985). Dissociative episodic and semantic priming effects in episodic recognition and lexical decision tasks.Journal of Memory & Language,24, 466–489.
*Ostrin, R. K. &Tyler, L. K. (1993). Automatic access to lexical semantics in aphasia: Evidence from semantic and associative priming.Brain & Language,45, 147–159.
*Paap, K. R., &Newsome, S. L. (1981). Parafoveal information is not sufficient to produce semantic or visual priming.Perception & Psychophysics,29, 457–466.
*Pecher, D., Zeelenberg, R., &Raaijmakers, J. G. W. (1998). Does pizza prime coin? Perceptual priming in lexical decision and pronunciation.Journal of Memory & Language,38, 401–418.
*Perea, M., &Gotor, A. (1997). Associative and semantic priming effects occur at very short stimulus-onset asynchronies in lexical decision and naming.Cognition,62, 223–240.
*Perea, M., Gotor, A., &Nacher, M. J. (1997). Efectos de facilitación asociativa vs. semántica con una breve asincronía estimular senal-test.Psicothema,9, 509–517.
*Perea, M., &Rosa, E. (1998)The effects of associative and semantic priming in the lexical decision task. Unpublished manuscript.
*Perfetti, C. A. &Tan, L. H. (1998). Time course of graphic, phonological, and semantic activation in Chinese character identification.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,24, 101–118.
*Plaut, D. C. (1995). Semantic and associative priming in a distributed attractor network. InProceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 37–42). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
*Posner, M. I., &Snyder, C. R. R. (1975). Attention and cognitive control. In R. L. Solso (Ed.),Information processing and cognition: The Loyola symposium (pp. 55–86). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
*Ratcliff, R., &McKoon, G. (1995). Sequential effects in lexical decision: Tests of compound-cue retrieval theory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 1380–1388.
*Rosenthal, R., &Rubin, D. B. (1982). Comparing effect sizes of independent studies.Psychological Bulletin,92, 500–504.
*Scholten, I. (1991).Semantic and associative priming in aphasic subjects. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
*Seidenberg, M. S., Waters, G. S., Sanders, M., &Langer, P. (1984). Pre- and postlexical loci of contextual effects on word recognition.Memory & Cognition,12, 315–328.
*Shelton, J. R. (1993).Semantic priming of lexical and conceptual representations: Manipulating depth of processing of the prime. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rice University.
*Shelton, J. R., &Martin, R. C. (1992). How semantic is automatic semantic priming?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,18, 1191–1210.
*Smith, M. C. (1979). Contextual facilitation in a letter search task depends on how the prime is processed.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,5, 239–251.
*Stolz, J. A., &Besner, D. (1999). On the myth of automatic semantic activation in reading.Current Directions in Psychological Science,8, 61–65.
*Thompson-Schill, S. L., Kurtz, K. J., &Gabrieli, J. D. E. (1998). Effects of semantic and associative relatedness on automatic priming.Journal of Memory & Language,38, 440–458.
*Tyler, L. K., &Moss, H. E. (1997). Functional properties of concepts: Studies of normal and brain-damaged patients.Cognitive Neuropsychology,14, 511–545.
*Williams, J. N. (1994). The relationship between word meanings in the first and second language: Evidence for a common, but restricted, semantic code.European Journal of Cognitive Psychology,6, 195–220.
*Williams, J. N. (1996). Is automatic priming semantic?European Journal of Cognitive Psychology,8, 113–161.
*Zwitserlood, P., &Schriefers, H. (1995). Effects of sensory information and processing time in spoken-word recognition.Language & Cognitive Processes,10, 121–136.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
I am very grateful to all the authors who generously supplied information that was not available in their published work: Christine Chiarello, Helen Moss, Kate Nation, Diane Pecher, Manolo Perea, Eva Rosa, Jennifer Shelton, Li Hai Tan, John Williams, and Piene Zwitserlood. This meta-analysis would have been far less interesting and comprehensive without their kind cooperation. I also thank Andrea Levitt, Ken Paap, and two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this manuscript.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lucas, M. Semantic priming without association: A meta-analytic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 7, 618–630 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212999
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212999