Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · 2000 · 221 citations · 36 references
NeurolinguisticsSemantic ProcessingAffective NeuroscienceInhibitory ProcessCognitionPsycholinguisticsAttentionPrimingCognitive PragmaticSocial SciencesPsychologyCognitive LinguisticsBiasLanguage StudiesVoluntary ControlCognitive NeuroscienceCognitive ScienceSemantic InterpretationExperimental PsychologyA. G. GreenwaldSocial CognitionNeurobiological MechanismUnconscious PrimingWord MeaningLinguisticsPriming Words
Prior work showed that unconsciously perceived priming words can influence judgments of other words. The study aimed to replicate and extend Greenwald et al.’s (1996) finding that unconsciously perceived priming words influence judgments of other words. The experiments varied whether priming and target stimuli shared a preexisting semantic relationship (affective, associative, or animacy) and whether they elicited the same response. Priming effects appeared only when primes and targets shared response compatibility, with no residual effects for affective, animacy, or semantic relatedness, indicating that unconscious words trigger response tendencies rather than spreading activation of meaning.
Four experiments were conducted to replicate and expand upon A. G. Greenwald, S. C. Draine, and R. L. Abrams's (1996) demonstration that unconsciously perceived priming words can influence judgments of other words. The present experiments manipulated 2 types of relationships between priming and target stimuli: (a) whether priming and target stimuli possess a preexisting semantic relationship (an affective relationship in Experiments 1, 2, and 4; an associative relationship in Experiment 3; and an animacy relationship in Experiment 4) and (b) whether the primes and targets produce the same response. Large priming effects were found only when the primes and targets possessed response compatibility. No residual effects for affective, animacy, or semantic relatedness were observed. Although these results strongly support the conclusion that word meaning can be unconsciously activated, they do not support the claim that the unconscious perception effects obtained in Greenwald et al. 's (1996) paradigm are caused by automatic spreading activation of word meaning. Instead, the results reported here are consistent with a claim that unconsciously perceived words automatically trigger response tendencies that facilitate or interfere with target responding.
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