EFFECT OF MASKED PICTURE PRIMES ON SEMANTIC PRIMING FOR EASY-TO-NAME AND DIFFICULT-TO-NAME WORDS

Words can be named more rapidly when they occur in a related context t han in an unrelated context. This improvement is more pronounced for w ords that are initially more difficult to recognize. Stanovich and Wes t (1983) attributed both of these semantic priming effects to the proc ess of automatic spreading activation. Experiments 1 and 2 supported t his interpretation by demonstrating that an increased semantic priming effect occurred for the more difficult words when the prime was maske d below recognition threshold. Experiment 3 replicated this effect wit h above-threshold primes. The adequacy of the thresholds for the maske d primes in Experiments 1 and 2 was tested through a block of posttest forced-choice trials. Analysis of these trials strongly supported the conclusion that the magnitude of the semantic priming effect was not positively related to the ability of the subjects to recognize the mas ked primes.