CONTEXT EFFECTS IN VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION - LEXICAL RELATEDNESS AND SYNTACTIC CONTEXT

In three experiments, we investigated how associative word-word primin g effects in German depend on different types of syntactic context in which the related words are embedded. The associative relation always concerned a verb as prime and a noun as target. Prime word and target word were embedded in visually presented strings of words that formed either a correct sentence, a scrambled List of words, or a sentence in which the target noun and the preceding definite article disagreed in syntactic gender. In contrast to previous studies (O'Seaghdha, 1989; Simpson, Peterson, Casteel, & Burgess, 1989), associative priming effe cts were not only obtained in correct sentences but also in scrambled word Lists. Associative priming, however, was not obtained when the de finite article and the target noun disagreed in syntactic gender. The latter finding suggests that a rather local violation of syntactic coh erence reduces or eliminates word-word priming effects. The results ar e discussed in the context of related work on the effect of gender dis -/agreement between a syntactic context and a target noun.