Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations.

Two experiments are reported in which 5s were presented two strings of letters simultaneously, with one string displayed visually above the other. In Exp. I, 5s responded "yes" if both strings were words, otherwise responding "no." In Exp. II, 5s responded "same" if the two strings were either both words or both nonwords, otherwise responding "different." "Yes" responses and "same" responses were faster for pairs of commonly associated words than for pairs of unassociated words. "Same" responses were slowest for pairs of nonwords. "No" responses were faster when the top string in the display was a nonword, whereas "different" responses were faster when the top string was a word. The results of both experiments support a retrieval model involving a dependence between separate successive decisions about whether each of the two strings is a word. Possible mechanisms that underlie this dependence are discussed.