Semantic Priming

Background

Can a word you never consciously see still influence your behavior? Semantic priming demonstrates that briefly presented words activate related concepts in memory, speeding up recognition of semantically associated words — even when the prime is too brief to consciously perceive.

Spreading Activation

When you encounter a word, activation spreads through your semantic network to related concepts. Seeing “DOCTOR” activates the concept of doctor, which then spreads to related nodes like NURSE, HOSPITAL, and MEDICINE. This makes those related words easier to process — a phenomenon called spreading activation (Collins & Loftus, 1975).

Masked Priming

In masked priming, the prime word is sandwiched between visual masks and presented so briefly (~30–50 ms) that participants typically cannot report seeing it. Yet the prime still produces measurable facilitation on related targets, providing compelling evidence for unconscious semantic processing.

This Experiment

On each trial, a prime word flashes for ~33 ms between pattern masks. A target string then appears, and you decide whether it is a real word or a nonword (lexical decision task). Related primes (e.g., DOCTOR → NURSE) should produce faster responses than unrelated primes (e.g., OCEAN → NURSE).

References

Meyer, D.E. & Schvaneveldt, R.W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 90, 227–234.
Marcel, A.J. (1983). Conscious and unconscious perception. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 238–300.
Dehaene, S. et al. (1998). Imaging unconscious semantic priming. Nature, 395, 597–600.

On each trial, a string of characters will flash briefly, followed by a target string.

Your task: decide whether the target is a real English word or a made-up nonword.

F = Real Word J = Nonword

Respond as quickly and accurately as possible.

There are 4 practice trials with feedback, then 60 main trials (~5 minutes).

Semantic Priming

Your Results