THE TIME-COURSE OF PERCEPTUAL AND CONCEPTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORD-FRAGMENT COMPLETION PRIMING

Two experiments examined the time course of the availability of percep tual and conceptual information in priming on the word fragment comple tion test. Subjects encoded primes as either visual words, auditory wo rds, or pictures. In Experiment 1, word fragments were exposed for eit her 500 ms, 1 s, 5 s, or 12 s. Only the visual words produced priming at the 500-ms and 1-s exposure times. In Experiment 2, subjects were a llowed up to 20 s to solve each fragment; response latencies were reco rded and cumulative response curves were generated. Visually primed fr agments were solved at a faster rate than either auditorily or pictori ally primed fragments. The results suggest that although conceptual pr ocessing can contribute to word fragment priming, perceptual processes are recruited earlier and at a faster rate.