Direct and indirect effects of semantic priming in motor planning and control

Semantic priming is known to affect actions. For example, the word SMALL or LARGE appearing on an object to be grasped affects grip aperture. We presented the words LONG or SHORT shortly before, during, or after the brief presentation of a line segment and measured whether this semantic prime affected the extent of a movement to the line's end point. Priming was observed with only early presentation of the word. A 2nd experiment demonstrated that little priming was observed when the apparent line length was not relevant to the required movements. Finally, a 3rd experiment found that substantial priming was found under comparable presentation conditions when participants merely made perceptual length judgments. These results suggest that semantic priming primarily affects the representation of the line length, not the planning or control of the movement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).