Unconscious priming of association judgments

Participants judged whether pairs of target words were associated or not-associated in meaning (association judgment task). Target pairs were preceded by a brief (200 ms) related or unrelated (prime) word presented to the nondominant eye. Each participant performed 2 blocks of association judgment task trials: 1 with primes that were legible, and 1 with primes that were masked by a pattern simultaneously presented to the dominant eye. Across 2 experiments, significantly larger masked priming effects were observed for participants who could not detect priming words (low-d' participants) than for participants who could partially see priming words (high-d' participants). This result suggests that undetectable masked primes can activate word meaning and that conscious attempts to process masked primes may inhibit unconscious activation. Additionally, evidence is presented that supports claims that spreading activation is the crucial mechanism responsible for unconscious priming.