Activation and Elaboration Effects in Recognition and Word Priming

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Abstract
Two experiments investigated the effect of direct and indirect activation on subsequent accessibility to individual items. In the first experiment, words were semantically processed in the context of either phonologically (rhyming) or conceptually (categorical) related words and tested subsequently for recognition and word completion. On the completion test the initial three letters of a word are presented for completion. The previously presented target word is one of several possible completions. The presence of different contexts had no differential effect either on recognition memory—which persisted at high levels for two days—or on completion—which decayed in the course of about 15 min. In the second experiment, the contexts were presented but the target words were not. Thus the rhyming and categorical contexts were directly activated but not the actual words that were scored on the subsequent tests. Prior activation of phonologically similar items affected both recognition and completion performance on immediate testing, but not after 10 min. Conceptual activation affected only recognition—an effect that lasted for a period of days. Completion performance demonstrates access to the integration component of recognition. The results were compared with attempts to demonstrate independence of recognition and completion.

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