It has been well documented in the literature that translation equivalents have special status in bilinguals’ lexical system and can be treated as synonymy across languages. It has been claimed that translation equivalents are overlapped at the conceptual level across languages with different orthographic and phonological forms. Evidence to support this claim comes from cross-language priming s...

In three experiments, after studying a blocked-categorized word list, subjects were given a speeded yes/no recognition test in which certain critical test items were preceded by various priming manipulations. The "primes" were other test items (both targets and lures) from the same category as the critical item. When a prime immediately preceded the critical item, reaction times (RTs) were fast...

The present work deals with two opposing positions on the role of morphology in word processing. Some argue that morphological relationships are simply a convergence of orthographic (formal) and semantic (meaning) relationships (Gonnerman & Seidenberg 2007). An alternative view suggests an independent role for morphology beyond semantics and orthography. These views have tested by behavioral or...

Two experiments investigated semantic priming effects in a modified version of the Dagenbach, Carr, and Barnhardt (1990) rare-word paradigm. After learning a list of rare words to a criterion of 50% recall, subjects participated in a lexical decision task in which the rare words served as primes. When the targets were associatively related to the primes, lexical decision responses were facilita...

Affective priming for associatively unrelated prime-target pairs was investigated using (a) the naming task, (b) a short stimulus onset asynchrony (250 ms), and (c) primes that had acquired their affective connotation during a differential evaluative conditioning procedure. Despite the fact that the primes and the targets were related on the affective dimension only, significant priming emerged...

In the present study we use the property of some linguistic items to express more than one meaning in order to investigate whether there is semantic priming at the sentence level. To test such a priming effect we use the connective because that can express a causal or purposive relation. If there is a priming effect, then participants will be expected to use causal because following causal prim...

While neglected stimuli can still be processed, few studies have directly addressed the issue of the unconscious access to semantics. In order to clarify this issue, we engaged four patients with unilateral left spatial neglect in a number comparison task. Each target number was preceded by a lateralized number prime, either in the intact or neglected hemifield (HF). Both group analyses and the...

Two experiments examined priming in the lexical decision task, an indirect test of memory. Experiment 1 manipulated type of processing during study of unrelated word pairs. Recognition of individual words benefited more from semantic than from nonsemantic processing. Repetition priming in lexical decision depended on the context in which the target appeared. Targets preceded at test by unstudie...

To examine the role of meaning in morphological decomposition ({re-}+{play}), researchers have employed the priming paradigm. Perceptually masked primes lead to facilitation both when decomposition is semantically appropriate (hunter-HUNT) and when it is not (corner-CORN), whereas with fully visible primes facilitation is observed only in the former case. We investigated the N400 brain potentia...