Skip to main content

Cognitive psychology of human memory (CogMemo thesaurus)

Search from vocabulary

Concept information

phenomenon > memory phenomenon > priming effect > semantic priming effect

Preferred term

semantic priming effect  

Definition

  • Type of priming during which the processing of a word is facilitated by the prior processing of a semantically-related word.

Broader concept

Synonym(s)

  • conceptual priming
  • semantic priming

Scope note

  • In a semantic priming task, participants are presented with words that serve as primes, and followed by target words. A prime word is semantically related or not to the target word. For example, the prime could be "doctor" and the semantically related target could be "nurse". Participants are asked to make a decision on the target word, usually by determining whether it is a real word or a non-word. Reaction times are measured. The semantic priming effect is observed when participants respond more quickly to the target word when it is preceded by a semantically related prime than by an unrelated prime (for example, "bread" as prime for "nurse").

Belongs to group

Bibliographic citation(s)

  • • Heyman, T., Bruninx, A., Hutchison, K. A., & Storms, G. (2018). The (un)reliability of item-level semantic priming effects. Behavior Research Methods, 50(6), 2173–2183. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1040-9

    • Document type: empirical study

    • Access: open

  • • Hutchison, K. A. (2003). Is semantic priming due to association strength or feature overlap? A microanalytic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10(4), 785‑813. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196544

    • Document type: literature review

    • Access: open

  • • McNamara, T. P. (2005). Semantic priming: Perspectives from memory and word recognition. Psychology Press.

    • Document type: literature review

    • Access: closed

  • • McNamara, T. P. (2013). Semantic memory and priming. In A. F. Healy, R. W. Proctor, & I. B. Weiner (Eds.), Handbook of psychology, Vol. 4: Experimental psychology (2nd ed.). (pp. 449–471). John Wiley & Sons Inc.

    • Document type: literature review

    • Access: closed

  • • Meyer, D. E., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 90(2), 227-234. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0031564

    • Document type: empirical study

    • Access: closed

Creator

  • Frank Arnould

In other languages

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/P66-S38MFW7P-4

Download this concept:

RDF/XML TURTLE JSON-LD Created 12/4/17, last modified 6/3/25