Being forward not backward: lexical limits to masked priming.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Masked priming effects are typically explained by pre-existing memory representations.
• Potential confounders like familiarity bias can obscure true priming effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if masked priming is mediated by existing memory representations.
• To determine if nonword targets exhibit repetition priming under modified task conditions.

Main Methods:

• Modified lexical decision and naming tasks to minimize familiarity bias.
• Used forward and backward word/nonword primes with unfamiliar targets.
• Participants read targets from right to left before responding.

Main Results:

• Priming effects were observed exclusively for forward primes with word targets.
• No significant priming occurred for nonword targets, regardless of prime type.
• Task instructions did not influence prime encoding.

Conclusions:

• Masked priming is driven by the automatic activation of stored information, not familiarity.
• The findings support computational models of priming based on pre-established memory traces.