Word priming without awareness: A new approach to circumvent explicit memory contamination

A major methodological limitation arising in the experimental study of impl icit memory is that tasks that are characterized as implicit memory tests c an be seriously contaminated by the use of covert explicit memory strategie s. Given the evidence indicating that brief presentation of words (below th e awareness threshold of subjects) can produce semantic priming, we wondere d whether rapid visual presentation of primed words might provide an avenue to produce word priming without explicit memory contamination. Normal subj ects were tested for word priming on a speeded category membership decision task. Explicit or implicit encoding procedures were used in four different experiments. Results demonstrated that brief presentation of words can ind eed offer a means of producing word priming in absence of explicit recognit ion or recall of the primed words presented during the study phase. They al so showed that such priming is equivalent in degree to the priming measured when using either a conventional implicit memory design or an explicit enc oding procedure prior to the study of the primes. (C) 1999 Academic Press.