D. Deacon et al., EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL INDEXES OF SEMANTIC PRIMING FOLLOWING AN UNRELATED INTERVENING ITEM, Cognitive brain research, 6(3), 1998, pp. 219-225
Interposing an unrelated word between related primes and targets often
disrupts priming. This finding has been used to support the view that
semantic information is represented in a distributed fashion, rather
than locally. In some studies where unrelated items intervened between
the prime and target, however, significant priming was nevertheless o
btained. The discrepant results of these studies has been attributed t
o differences in speed-accuracy tradeoff, post-lexical checking, consc
ious rehearsal of the prime and differences in the depth to which the
prime and target were processed. The present study was designed in suc
h a way as to minimize variability associated with post-lexical influe
nces. The N400 component of the human event-related potential was used
as a physiological index of the extent to which priming occurred with
and without the interposition of an unrelated item. Priming effects o
n both the amplitude and latency of the N400 were rendered non-signifi
cant by the presence of an intervening unrelated word. The results are
interpreted as tentative evidence that semantic representations are d
istributed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.