Abstract
This paper reports the results of manipulations of word features for the magnitude of priming effects. In Experiment 1, the printed frequency of the target words and the number of connections among their associates were varied, and during testing participants were given cues and asked to produce the first word to come to mind as rapidly as possible in implicit free association. Priming effects were greater for low-frequency words and for those with many connections among their associates. In Experiments 2 and 3, target words were presented under incidental or intentional learning conditions during study, and the presence of direct preexisting connections from target to cue and from cue to target was varied. Priming effects were greater when either connection was present, with each connection having additive effects. In Experiments 4 and 5, priming effects for indirect links (shared associates and mediators) were examined. The results of these experiments indicate that priming in free association depends on both the general accessibility of the target as a response and the strengthening of direct target-to-cue connections. These findings raise problems for theories that attribute priming only to target accessibility or only to target-to-cue association.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Anderson, J. R. (1983).The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Boring, E. G. (1957).A history of experimental psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Chappell, M., &Humphreys, M. S. (1994). An auto-associative neural network for sparse representations: Analysis and application to models of recognition and cued recall.Psychological Review,101, 103–128.
Cramer, P. (1968).Word association. New York: Academic Press.
Dennis, S., &Humphreys, M. S. (2001). A context noise model of episodic word recognition.Psychological Review,108, 452–478.
Ebbinghaus, H. (1964).Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology. New York: Dover. (Original work published 1885)
Fox, P. W. (1968). Recall and misrecall as a function of cultural and individual word association habits and regulation of the recall environment.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,7, 632–637.
Glanzer, M., &Bowles, N. (1976). Analysis of the word frequency effect in recognition memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory,2, 21–31.
Hintzman, D. L. (1976). Repetition and memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.),The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 10, pp. 47–91). New York: Academic Press.
Horowitz, L. M., Brown, Z. M., &Weissbluth, S. (1964). Availability and the direction of associations.Journal of Experimental Psychology,68, 541–549.
Horowitz, L. M., &Prytulak, L. S. (1969). Redintegrative memory.Psychological Review,76, 519–531.
Humphreys, M. S., Bain, J. D., &Pike, R. (1989). Different ways to cue a coherent memory system: A theory for episodic, semantic, and procedural tasks.Psychological Review,96, 208–233.
Humphreys, M. S., &Galbraith, R. C. (1975). Forward and backward associations in cued recall: Predictions from the encoding specificity principle.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory,1, 702–710.
Humphreys, M. S., Tehan, G., O’Shea, A., &Bolland, S. W. (2000). Target similarity effects: Support for the parallel distributed processing assumptions.Memory & Cognition,28, 798–811.
Jacoby, L. L., &Hollingshead, A. (1990). Toward a generate/recognize model of performance on direct and indirect tests of memory.Journal of Memory & Language,29, 433–454.
Kučera, H., &Francis, W. N. (1967).Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence.Psychological Review,87, 252–271.
Martin, J. G. (1964). Word-association frequency and the proximity effect.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,3, 344–345.
Nelson, D. L., Bennett, D. J., Gee, N. R., Schreiber, T. A., &Mc-Kinney, V. (1993). Implicit memory: Effects of network size and interconnectivity on cued recall.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 747–764.
Nelson, D. L., Bennett, D. J., &Leibert, T. W. (1997). One step is not enough: Making better use of association norms to predict cued recall.Memory & Cognition,25, 785–796.
Nelson, D. L., Bennett, D. J., &Xu, J. (1997). Recollective and automatic uses of memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,23, 872–885.
Nelson, D. L., &McEvoy, C. L. (2000). What is this thing called frequency?Memory & Cognition,28, 509–522.
Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., &Dennis, S. (2000). What is free association and what does it measure?Memory & Cognition,28, 887–899.
Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Schreiber, T. A. (1999).The University of South Florida word association, rhyme and fragment norms. Available: http://www.usf.edu/FreeAssociation.
Nelson, D. L., McKinney, V. M., &Bennett, D. J. (1999). Conscious and automatic uses of memory in cued recall and recognition. In B. H. Challis & B.M. Velichkovsky (Eds.),Stratification in cognition and consciousness (pp. 173–202). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nelson, D. L., McKinney, V. M., Gee, N. R., &Janczura, G. A. (1998). Interpreting the influence of implicitly activated memories on recall and recognition.Psychological Review,105, 299–324.
Nelson, D. L., Schreiber, T. A., &Holley, P. E. (1992). The retrieval of controlled and automatic aspects of meaning on direct and indirect tests.Memory & Cognition,20, 671–684.
Nelson, D. L., &Xu, J. (1995). Effects of implicit memory on explicit recall: Set size and word frequency effects.Psychological Research,57, 203–214.
Nelson, D. L., &Zhang, N. (2000). The ties that bind what is known to the recall of what is new.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,7, 604–617.
Nelson, D. L., Zhang, N., &McKinney, V. M. (2001). The ties that bind what is known to the recognition of what is new.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,27, 1147–1159.
Schreiber, T. A., &Nelson, D. L. (1998). The relation between feelings of knowing and the number of neighboring concepts linked to the test cue.Memory & Cognition,26, 869–883.
Segal, S. J., &Cofer, C. N. (1960). The effect of recency and recall on word association [Abstract].American Psychologist,15, 451.
Storms, L. H. (1958). Apparent backward association: A situational effect.Journal of Experimental Psychology,55, 390–395.
Tulving, E., &Thomson, D. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.Psychological Review,80, 352–373.
Vaidya, C. J., Gabrieli, J. D. E., Keane, M. M., Monti, L. A., Gutierrez-Rivas, H., &Zarella, M.M. (1997). Evidence for multiple mechanisms of conceptual priming on implicit memory tests.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,23, 1324–1343.
Weldon, M. S., &Coyote, K. C. (1996). Failure to find the pictorial superiority effect in implicit conceptual memory tests.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,22, 670–686.
Zeelenberg, R., Shiffrin, R. M., &Raaijmakers, J. G. (1999). Priming in a free association task as a function of association directionality.Memory & Cognition,27, 956–961.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by Grant MH16360 from the National Institute of Mental Health to D.L.N.
—Accepted by previous editorial team
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nelson, D.I., Goodmon, L.B. Experiencing a word can prime its accessibility and its associative connections to related words. Memory & Cognition 30, 380–398 (2002). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194939
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194939