The inadvertent use of prior knowledge in a generative cognitive task

In four experiments with 332 participants, participants were asked to gener ate novel nonwords for English categories. When participants were shown exa mples embedded with regular orthographic structures, participants' nonwords tended to conform orthographically to the examples, despite instructions t o avoid using features of the examples. The effect was found with immediate testing (Experiment 1) and delayed testing (Experiment 2). The effect was also found with arbitrary features (Experiments 1-4), as well as with natur ally occurring orthographic regularities (Experiment 4). Participants had d ifficulty avoiding the use of this prior knowledge, despite being able to i st the features they were asked to avoid (Experiment 3). The results are di scussed in terms of the inadvertent use of prior knowledge in generative co gnitive tasks.