The influence of working memory load on semantic priming.

Abstract

The present research examines the nature of the different processes that have been proposed to underlie semantic priming. Specifically, it has been argued that priming arises as a result of automatic target activation and/or the use of strategies like prospective expectancy generation and retrospective semantic matching. This article investigates the extent that these processes rely on cognitive resources by experimentally manipulating working memory load. To disentangle prospective and retrospective processes, prime-target pairs were selected such that they were symmetrically associated (e.g., answer-question; SYM) or asymmetrically associated in either the forward direction (e.g., panda-bear; FA) or the backward direction (e.g., ball-catch; BA). The results showed that priming for FA pairs completely evaporated under a high working memory load but that it remained stable for BA and SYM pairs. This was taken to mean that prospective processes, which are assumed to cause FA priming, require cognitive resources, whereas retrospective processes, which lead to BA priming, are relatively effortless.

Does a Working Memory Load Really Influence Semantic Priming? A Self-replication Attempt

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The present paper describes two attempts to replicate a recent study of ours in the semantic priming domain (Heyman, Van Rensbergen, Storms, Hutchison, & De Deyne, 2015). In that study, we observed that semantic priming for forward associates (e.g., panda-bear) completely evaporated when participants' working memory was taxed, whereas backward (e.g., baby-stork) and symmetric associates (e.g., cat-dog) showed no ill-effects of a secondary task.

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“…The present study is a direct replication of Heyman et al's (2015) experiment, though it was conducted at Montana State University (USA) instead of the University of Leuven (Belgium). Hence, it differs from the original in a number of ways: the language (English instead of Dutch), the participant pool, the testing environment, etc.…”

“…We used the same prime-target pairs as in Hutchison, Heap, Neely, and Thomas' (2014) study, after which Heyman et al's (2015) study was modelled. The stimulus set consisted of 120 critical pairs (i.e., 40 BA, 40 FA, and 40 SYM pairs), 80 filler SYM pairs, and 120 filler word-non-word pairs.…”

“…Several recent studies have examined whether semantic activation, and the priming effect it produces, indeed fulfill Neely and Kahan's (2001) automaticity criteria, but the results are mixed (e.g., Augustinova & Ferrand, 2014;Besner & Reynolds, 2017;Heyman, Hutchison, & Storms, 2016;Heyman et al, 2015;White & Besner, 2016). Here, we will focus on Heyman et al's study (2015), which tested whether the processes underlying semantic priming are capacity free (i.e., the second part of Neely and Kahan's definition) by limiting working memory capacity via a secondary task.…”

“…The somewhat surprising pattern of results and the associated theoretical repercussions arguably merit replication. Heyman et al (2015) manipulated Type of Association (BA, FA, or SYM), Load (high or low), Relatedness (related or unrelated), and Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (200 or 1,200 ms; henceforth SOA). We found a significant Load × Type of Association × Relatedness interaction using by-subject and by-item analyses of variance (ANOVAs), whereas none of the other interactions reached statistical significance across both subject and item ANOVAs.…”