To plan or not to plan: Does planning for production remove facilitation from associative priming?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Conversation theories suggest speakers plan responses during listening.
• Linguistic alignment (priming) may reduce cognitive costs of concurrent listening and speaking.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate how speech planning affects identity and associative priming.
• Examine the impact of concurrent speech planning on priming effects.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments assessed priming from spoken words to picture naming.
• Participants experienced conditions with and without concurrent speech planning.
• Priming effects (identity, associative) were measured under varying cognitive loads.

Main Results:

• Experiment 1 showed equal priming in planning and no-planning conditions.
• Experiment 2 revealed maintained identity priming but reduced associative priming during planning.
• Associative priming was absent in the planning condition with complex decision-making.

Conclusions:

• Associative priming can occur during speech planning.
• The cognitive load associated with speech planning influences associative priming.
• Complex concurrent tasks may interfere with the processing of associative primes.