Low-constraint facilitation in lexical decision with single-word contexts

Single-word, low-constraint adjective contexts were used to "prime" lexical decision to noun targets in Serbo-Croat. Semantically congruent situations consisted of adjective-noun pairs that were not highly predictable but were nonetheless plausible (e.g., GOOD-AUNT). Semantically incongruent situations used pairs that were implausible (e.g., SLOW-COAT). All adjective-noun pairs were grammatically congruent and were compared with a neutral XXX baseline. In Experiment 1, at a stimulus onset asynchrony of 300 ms, congruous situations showed 59 ms of facilitation while incongruous situations did not differ from the baseline. The same pattern was repeated in Experiment 2, at a stimulus onset asynchrony of 800 ms. Congruous situations were facilitated 67 ms. Results are discussed in terms of a message-level coherence check in Forster's (1979) model of autonomous levels of language processing.