THE INCREMENTAL PRIMING TECHNIQUE - A METHOD FOR DETERMINING WITHIN-CONDITION PRIMING EFFECTS

A novel priming technique is applied in two experiments using an alpha betic decision and a lexical decision task to study effects of repetit ion, and form-related priming on letter and word recognition. The incr emental priming technique consists of a gradual increase of the prime' s informational value (operationalized as prime intensity). The minimu m prime-intensity level serves as a within-condition baseline for each priming condition. Thus, we can define any priming effect with respec t to two baseline conditions: one is the minimum-intensity condition o f the particular priming condition (within-condition baseline), and th e other is a different priming condition (across-condition baseline). This double-baseline approach makes measuring of priming effects more reliable and imposes stronger constraints on our interpretations of th ese effects.