Does LGHT prime DARK? Masked associative priming with addition neighbors

Can masked synonym priming replicate masked translation priming?

This study examines whether synonyms are represented similarly to translation equivalents in the bilingual mind. In particular, this study investigated whether there is masked synonym priming such that it will simulate masked translation priming in the L1-L2 direction. Given that masked translation priming studies consistently show priming in the L1-L2 direction, it was predicted that synonyms should show a masked priming effect if the prime was higher in frequency than the target. Contrary to what Bilingual Interactive Activation models would predict, there was no priming for synonyms in the high-to-low frequency (HF-LF) condition or in the low-to-high frequency (LF-HF) condition in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 only tested the HF-LF condition to ensure that previous exposure to LF words within the experiment did not affect the results. Again, no HF-LF synonym priming was observed. The effect sizes of these synonym priming effects were comparable with that of L2-L1 translation priming, all of which were weak. This is not surprising given that semantic interpretation of a given word usually occurs post-lexically and requires partial awareness. What is surprising is that there is robust evidence showing strong L1-L2 masked translation priming effect, which bilingual lexical processing models should attempt to explain, thereby uncovering the relations between L1 words and their L2 translations.

Semantic similarity influences early morphological priming in Serbian: a challenge to form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition

Semantically similar (e.g., coolant-COOL) primes have produced greater facilitation than have form-similar but semantically dissimilar (e.g., rampant-RAMP) primes when English words have appeared in the forward-masked primed lexical decision task (Feldman, O'Connor, & Moscoso del Prado Martín, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16: 684-691, 2009). These results challenge claims that form-based, semantically blind activation underlies early morphological facilitation. Some have argued that the English materials in previous studies were not ideally constructed, insofar as the types of spelling changes to affixed stems differed in the semantically similar and dissimilar pairs. The present study exploited Serbian's bialphabetism, rich morphology, and homographic (form-identical) stems to replicate early effects of semantic similarity. Furthermore, it incorporated within-target manipulations of prime type and of alphabet, such that the alphabets of the prime-target pairs matched in Experiment 1a and alternated in Experiment 1b. Importantly, no letter or phoneme changes occurred between the stems of the primes and targets. These results revealed significant effects of semantic similarity that are comparable with and without alphabet alternation. The semantic effects in Serbian replicated almost exactly those in English (Feldman et al., Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16: 684-691, 2009), which suggests that even early in the course of processing, morphemes are units of meaning as well as of form. The results failed to support models of lexical processing that postulate sequential access, first to the morphological form, and then to the semantic aspects of words.

Text-speak processing and the sustained attention to response task

We examined performance in a sustained attention to response task (SART) (Experiment 1) and a more traditionally formatted vigilance task (Experiment 2) using novel word stimuli (text-speak) and normally spelt words. This enabled us to address whether the SART is a better measure of sustained attention or of response strategy, and to investigate the cognitive demands of text-speak processing. In Experiment 1, 72 participants completed a subset (text-speak) and a word SART, as well as a self-reported text experience questionnaire. Those who reported more proficiency and experience with text-speak made more errors on the subset SART, but this appeared to be due to their increase in response speed. This did not occur in the word SART. In Experiment 2, 14 participants completed high No-Go, low-Go (more traditional response format) versions of these tasks to further investigate the cognitive demands of text-speak processing. Response latency increased over periods of watch only for the text-speak task, not for the word task. The results of Experiment 1 support the perspective that the SART is highly sensitive to response strategy, and the results of both experiments together indicate target detection tasks may be a novel way of investigating the cognitive demands of text-speak processing.