PRIMING OF NEW ASSOCIATIONS IN READING TIME - WHAT IS LEARNED

The priming of nem associations has been a controversial topic, with s ome studies finding significant effects but others failing to replicat e these results. Three studies investigated the priming of new associa tions in a reading time task, presenting lists of word pairs that were read aloud as quickly as possible. In Experiment 1, significant primi ng of new associations was found after two study presentations, replic ating similar results by Moscovitch, Winocur, and MacLachan (1986). In Experiment 2, 2, reading time was facilitated for intact pairs when w ord positions remained constant relative to when word positions were r eversed. This suggested that the associative priming effect was relate d to specific lower level features of the word pairs rather than to ab stract associations. In Experiment 3, the insertion of the word and be tween test words eliminated the pairing-specific effect, placing the l ocus of new association priming at the transition between words within pairs. These findings demonstrate that the knowledge that supports pr iming of new associations in the reading time task involves perceptual or articulatory information about the transitions between words rathe r than abstract associative knowledge.