Investigating long-term semantic priming of middle- and low-familiarity category exemplars

The authors examined long-term semantic priming of middle- and low-familiarity category exemplar targets as a result of participants' studying multiple middle- and low-familiarity exemplar primes within a category. The authors used a lexical decision task to test the hypothesis that semantic encoding of middle- and low-familiarity category exemplar primes causes long-term priming of middle- and low-familiarity category exemplar targets from the same category. Participants were 12 undergraduate students who judged semantic characteristics of category exemplar primes at study and at test and who provided lexical decisions on both primes and targets in a paradigm in which at least 6 intervening items separated primes and targets. Results supported the hypothesis by showing long-term semantic priming of middle- and low-familiarity category exemplar targets. The authors discuss results in terms of theories of semantic priming.