Sandwich priming effects in picture naming
Studies of lexical access in speech planning often use priming or interference
paradigms, where a target picture is combined with a written prime or distracter word. A
difficulty in interpreting the results of studies using interference paradigms with clearly
visible distracters is that effects arising during lexical access cannot be distinguished
from effects arising during self-monitoring. A difficulty with using masked priming
paradigms is that the effects tend to be small and fragile. We report a series of picture
naming experiments using both the conventional masked priming procedure and the
sandwich priming procedure first used in lexical decision experiments by Lupker and masked prime the participants are briefly (i.e., 33 ms) presented the name of the target
picture. Although neither categorically nor phonologically related primes significantly
affected picture naming in the traditional masked priming experiments, in the sandwich
priming experiments: (a) categorically related primes (e.g. “dog-cat”) interfered more
than unrelated distracters with picture naming and (b) phonologically related primes
(“mat-cat”) facilitated picture naming. The theoretical implications of these findings will
be discussed.
Lupker, S.J., & Davis, C.J. (2009). Sandwich priming: A method for overcoming the
limitations of masked priming by reducing lexical competition effects. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 35, 618-639.
Publication type
TalkPublication date
2011
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