Abstract
Two experiments investigated semantic priming effects in a modified version of the Dagenbach, Carr, and Barnhardt (1990) rare-word paradigm. After learning a list of rare words to a criterion of 50% recall, subjects participated in a lexical decision task in which the rare words served as primes. When the targets were associatively related to the primes, lexical decision responses were facilitated following recalled definitions and inhibited following unrecalled definitions. When the targets were synonyms of the rare words, facilitation occurred following both recalled and unrecalled definitions. The results were interpreted as supporting a center-surround model of attentional retrieval that may serve an adaptive role in new learning.
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This research was supported in part by National Institute on Aging Grant AG09195 to E.L.G., Grant MH 35856 from the National Institute of Mental Health to John Kihlstrom and the McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.
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Barnhardt, T.M., Glisky, E.L., Polster, M.R. et al. Inhibition of associates and activation of synonyms in the rare-word paradigm: Further evidence for a center-surround mechanism. Memory & Cognition 24, 60–69 (1996). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197272
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197272