EXPECTANCY-BASED ASSOCIATIVE AND IDENTITY PRIMING IN PRONUNCIATION

Evidence for expectancy-based priming in the pronunciation task was pr ovided in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, a high proportion of associatively related trials produced greater associative priming and superior retrieval of primes in a subsequent test of memory for pr imes, whereas high- and low-proportion groups showed comparable repeti tion benefits in perceptual identification of previously presented pri mes. In Experiment 2, the low-proportion condition had few associative ly related pairs hut many identity pairs. In Experiment 3, identity pr iming was greater in a high- than a low-identity proportion group, wit h similar repetition benefits and prime retrieval responses for the tw o groups. These results indicate that when the prime-target relationsh ip is salient, subjects strategically vary their processing of the pri me according to the nature of the prime-target relationship.