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Psycholinguists are interested in how words are stored in human memory. The question as to whether words are stored as single root words or whether they are stored along with the affixes still remains a controversial issue. Aitchison (1987) believes that each word has a separate entry. Mackay (1978) and Taft (1981) hold that words are made of constituent morphemes. When we listen, we decompose the morphemes and when we speak, we combine them to make multimorphemic words. The decomposition view claims that only the root is stored in memory. To hypothesise this claim, a group of 50 students at the intermediate level at the preparatory department of a state university situated on the western coast of Turkey were selected. They were taught 10 root nouns and verbs and 10 complex nouns and verbs they are not familiar with. Then to see how the morphological complexity affected lexical access and which type of words were better remembered, they were tested on these words. Then the same group was given 10 simple and 10 complex words in the mother tongue and their answer times were compared. The results shed light on the validity of the decomposition theory, showcasing we remember the words in roots better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christie and Klein (2008) recommended using the 7 key conditions used by Neumann and DeSchepper (1991) and Stadler and Hogan (1996) to investigate the full range of effects produced by recently rejected distractors (negative priming) and recently attended targets (positive priming) in selective attention tasks. They suggested that incorporating all seven conditions should help to overcome the current muddle of possible explanations for positive and negative priming effects. Crucially, although the overall patterns of results reported by Neumann and DeSchepper and Stadler and Hogan were identical, some of the conditions in Stadler and Hogan's experiment produced much larger effects, particularly in the attended repetition (positive priming) conditions, compared with those of Neumann and DeSchepper. Here we use statistical support provided by an analytic approach known as predicted pattern testing (Levin & Neumann, 1999) to argue that asymmetric transfer produced by participant expectancy effects could account for the magnitude of Stadler and Hogan's positive priming outcomes, rather than the commonly accepted assumption made by Christie and Klein, and others, that prime-probe congruencies involving targets should affect performance (responses to probe targets) more than prime-probe congruencies involving distractors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christie and Klein (2008) recommended using the 7 key conditions used by Neumann and De- Schepper (1991) and Stadler and Hogan (1996) to investigate the full range of effects produced by recently rejected distractors (negative priming) and recently attended targets (positive priming) in selective attention tasks. They suggested that incorporating all seven conditions should help to overcome the current muddle of possible explanations for positive and negative priming effects. Crucially, although the overall patterns of results reported by Neumann and DeSchepper and Stadler and Hogan were identical, some of the conditions in Stadler and Hogan's experiment produced much larger effects, particularly in the attended repetition (positive priming) conditions, compared with those of Neumann and DeSchepper. Here we use statistical support provided by an analytic approach known as predicted pattern testing (Levin & Neumann, 1999) to argue that asymmetric transfer produced by participant expectancy effects could account for the magnitude of Stadler and Hogan's positive priming outcomes, rather than the commonly accepted assumption made by Christie and Klein, and others, that prime-probe congruencies involving targets should affect performance (responses to probe targets) more than prime-probe congruencies involving distractors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research examined potential moderators of gender and racial stereotype priming in sequential priming paradigms. Results from five experiments suggest that stereotype priming effects are more consistent in tasks that elicit both semantic priming and response competition (i.e., response priming paradigms) rather than tasks that evoke semantic priming alone (i.e., semantic priming paradigms). Recommendations for future stereotype priming research and the implication of these results for the proper interpretation of stereotype priming effects are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Words in the lexicon are assumed to be organised in semantic fields or network. Every word in the lexicon is related to another word belonging to the same lexical category or sharing common features and this kind of relationship is called semantic relatedness. Further, a word in the lexicon is related to many words through semantic relatedness but extent of relationship between the words is not same. Purpose: The study aimed to determine influence of semantic relatedness through priming in adolescents. Method: Thirty participants (mean age fifteen years) participated. Sixty prime-target pairs were presented through DMDX Version 5.0. Thirty were semantically related and thirty semantically unrelated. Among thirty semantically related word pairs, eight pairs were super-ordinate pairs and category coordinate pairs, derivatives and functional coordinates were seven each. Semantic judgment was the task. Results: The mean reaction time and accuracy scores for only semantically related scores on the four ordinates were considered and it was found that mean reaction time and accuracy scores were better for super-ordinates followed by category coordinates, derivatives and functional ordinates. Conclusion: Based on the results of the study it's clear that the extent of relatedness would vary depending on the semantic distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to encourage people with mobility impairments (PwMI) to become active tourists, it is crucial to enhance their self-determination for overcoming travel constraints. This study proposes mental construal priming as a relatively efficient approach to facilitating self-determined travel pursuits among PwMI. Two pretest-posttest web-based experiments within the context of accessible and inaccessible service support the construal-facilitating effect on self-determined travel motivations, particularly through moderating the relationships between autonomy/competence satisfaction and self-determined motivations. This study offers theoretical implications by bridging construal level theory and self-determination theory, and introduces a new perspective of utilizing mindset intervention to cultivate travel motivations. The context-based adoption of different construal priming programs is recommended to maximize facilitation effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to examine empirically whether news stories about political sex scandals could prime people to worry about their own relationships or view sexual betrayal more negatively. An online experiment (N = 231) reveals that reading news stories about political sex scandals does not prime people to worry about the health of their own relationships or sexual betrayal. Rather, relationship dissatisfaction and preexisting attitudes toward sexual infidelity explain how they feel about infidelity more than what they read in the news. Results are discussed in relation to priming theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representation of languages in a bilingual mind in general and the way bilinguals restore words from their mental lexicon, and the way they retrieve the words have been explored by many researchers resulting in varied findings. The more information regarding bilingual memory is obtained, the better image would be constructed about this knowledge representation. The present study is an attempt to investigate if bilinguals share semantic features of their LI and L2 using semantic priming paradigm. In two experiments, semantically related target-prime pairs were examined. In both of the experiments target words were in English, but the primes were in Persian in the first experiment and in English in the second. Reaction time of sixty Persian-English bilinguals for these prompts was measured by DMDX software. Results showed that semantic priming effect was not there in any of the experiments. The findings suggest that bilinguals have shared semantic representation for two languages with different scripts only for the cognate words. Results also suggest that using semantically related words, for noncognate words, in the process of language teaching is not useful in intermediate proficiency levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Emotions are complex psychophysiological changes experienced during the interactions of internal and external processes. The stimuli that have emotional value have processing efficiency both in encoding and retrieval processes with respect to the neutral stimuli. Processing advantage is present also for implicit memory. Priming effect does not require conscious recollection and leads to changes in responding due to previous exposure to the stimulus. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the effect of presentation type and different emotional contexts on the priming. Method: Sixty-volunteered-university-students were (Female: n=40, Mean age =19.03±1.23; Male: n=20, Mean age =19.70±1.92) randomly assigned to the experimental conditions. Presentation type (Subliminal and Supraliminal) was between subject and Emotional Context (pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures) was within subject independent variables. Dependent variables were Word Stem Completion score and completion latencies. Results: Unpleasant emotional context had more capacity to create priming effect than the other emotional contexts. Both Subliminal and Supraliminal conditions favored the priming. Controversially to the transfer appropriate processing approach, the priming effect that was produced by supraliminal condition significantly higher than the priming created by the subliminal condition. Conclusions: Unpleasant picture context produced more priming due to reason that evolutionarily important, i.e. thread-related, stimuli have processing priority and they capture the attention, utilize other cognitive resources easily. Even in priming, that is a phenomenon based heavily on data driven processes, concept driven processes are also effectual as indicated by levels-of-processing approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines if aggressive responses through a shooter bias are systematically generated by priming outgroups or if a threat stereotypically associated with the primed outgroup is required. First, a pilot study identified outgroups stereotypically associated and not associated with threat. Afterwards, the main study included a manipulation of target group accessibility - ingroup versus nonthreatening outgroup versus threatening outgroup. Following exposure to primes of the group categories, the participants in all conditions played a shooter game in which the targets were males and females with ambiguous ethnicity and religion. Results demonstrated that while only priming of an outgroup stereotypically associated with threat elicits aggressive responses, priming of both nonthreatening and threatening outgroups leads to an increase in the ability to distinguish between stimuli compared to ingroup priming. These effects are discussed in terms of priming effects, dimensions of threat, and possible interpretations of this ability increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primed lexical decision task (LDT) was used to determine whether emotion (e.g., love, fear) and emotion-laden (e.g., puppy, hospital) word processing differs, both explicitly and implicitly. Previous experiments have investigated how emotion word processing differs from both abstract and concrete word processing (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004; Altarriba, Bauer, & Benvenuto, 1999). To assess for differences between emotion and emotion-laden word processing, 2 experiments were conducted, the first assessing explicit processing (using an unmasked LDT) and the second assessing automatic processing (using a masked LDT). The prediction that semantic priming would differ between emotion word pairs and emotion-laden word pairs was confirmed in both experiments, with shorter response times for emotion targets and greater priming effects for emotion word pairs than for emotion-laden word pairs. The role of valence is discussed, emphasizing the ways valence affects the speed with which these words are accessed and processed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to compare the lexical, phonemic and syllabic priming on picture naming in pre-schoolers who were exposed to phonemic teaching method with those exposed to alphabetical teaching method and the obtained data was statistically analysed using paired sample t test to compare the mean reaction times for naming with different types of priming. Responses from within the group and across the groups were compared using independent sample t test. The mean reaction times for naming in lexical priming, syllabic priming and phonemic priming were 1.267sec, 1.47sec and 1.41 sec with a mean error of 7.1, 4.2 and 9.3 in alphabet teaching group respectively, whereas for phonemic teaching group the mean reaction time taken to name the picture for lexical priming, syllabic priming and phonemic priming were 1.24sec, 1.33sec and 1.38sec with a mean error of 5, 5.1 and 7.2 respectively. Even though the phonemic teaching group performed better, there was no significant difference between the groups for reaction times of naming with syllabic, phonemic or lexical priming and number of errors according to the results of independent sample t test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common strategy in unconscious perception research is to use either pattern masking or metacontrast masking to render prime stimuli "invisible" to consciousness. However, several recent studies have questioned whether the identities of prime stimuli (typically arrows or diamonds and squares) in metacontrast masking studies are impossible to consciously perceive. In a series of studies, we concurrently related prime awareness, target response time priming, and prime identification across 3 prime-mask stimulus onset asynchronies (27,40, and 67 ms). We found that increases in prime awareness ratings were accompanied by better prime identification performance. Significant prime identification in the 27-ms condition was obtained only at the highest awareness rating; for the other 2 stimulus onset asynchronies most awareness ratings were associated with above-chance prime identification. The priming effects obtained in these paradigms occur, to some degree, when participants are likely to be aware of the prime stimuli. Our results, collectively, suggest that metacontrast masking of primes does not necessarily preclude their awareness. Priming effects may depend on at least partial awareness of the prime stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the memory-recruitment account of priming that can contribute to target processing and also reports three lines of research that are carried out to contrast various masked priming accounts. It mentions that the first line examines why nonwords having no existing representations show masked priming and the second line examines the sensitivity of masked priming to prime-proportion manipulations. It also presents the third line which examines effects of masked priming.

According to social cognition textbooks, stereotypes are activated automatically if appropriate categorical cues are processed. Although many studies have tested effects of activated stereotypes on behavior, few have tested the process of stereotype activation. Blair and Banaji (1996) demonstrated that subjects were faster to categorize first names as male or female if those were preceded by gender congruent attribute primes. The same, albeit smaller, effects emerged in a semantic priming design ruling out response priming by Banaji and Hardin (1996). We sought to replicate these important effects. Mirroring Blair and Banaji (1996) we found strong priming effects as long as response priming was possible. However, unlike Banaji and Hardin (1996), we did not find any evidence for automatic stereotype activation, when response priming was ruled out. Our findings suggest that automatic stereotype activation is not a reliable and global phenomenon but is restricted to more specific conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although replication is a central tenet of science, direct replications are rare in psychology. This research tested variation in the replicability of 13 classic and contemporary effects across 36 independent samples totaling 6,344 participants. In the aggregate, 10 effects replicated consistently. One effect - imagined contact reducing prejudice -- showed weak support for replicability. And two effects -- flag priming influencing conservatism and currency priming influencing system justification -- did not replicate. We compared whether the conditions such as lab versus online or US versus international sample predicted effect magnitudes. By and large they did not. The results of this small sample of effects suggest that replicability is more dependent on the effect itself than on the sample and setting used to investigate the effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract: The current research examined whether Americans incorporate obesity into their national identity, and further investigated the role an evolved behavioral immune system plays in shaping Americans' perceptions of obesity and national identity. Two studies revealed that obesity is not, on the whole, incorporated into the American identity at an implicit level. Moreover, when disease concerns were salient, either because of an experimental priming manipulation (Study 1) or due to recent illness (Study 2), thin individuals (for whom obesity may represent a particularly atypical morphology and thus a heuristic cue to disease) implicitly excluded obesity from the American identity to a greater degree. Thus, implicitly categorizing a subgroup of people as an outgroup pathogen threat may promote behavioral avoidance, exclusion, or stigmatization. This behavioral avoidance, could, in turn lead to less risk of fitness-reducing disease contraction. Further implications for evolutionary theories of disease avoidance, group identity, and discrimination are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Building on Hong et al.'s (2000) seminal work on bicultural individuals' cultural frame switching, this study explores culture's causal consequences on Shanghai college English majors' social attributions. Ninety-nine three-year diploma (vo-tech) sophomores were randomly assigned to three priming conditions (Chinese, American, and neutral) and completed the exact same attribution task. Significant differences in situational attributions were found between the Chinese and American primed groups. Specifically, the participants gave contrastive responses to the primed culture, i.e., they used more situational attributions when primed with American culture than when primed with Chinese culture, a tendency contrary to the empirically established cultural differences in social attributions between North Americans and East Asians (Morris & Peng, 1994). The results are interpreted from the perspective of cultural knowledge application and cultural identity management. Theoretical and methodological implications for intercultural communication research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Understanding how pro-environmental messages may influence behaviour is key to promoting sustainable consumer choice. Research suggests that people automatically evaluate objects as a function of their instrumentality to satisfying active goals. We hypothesized that priming an environmental-protection goal through exposure to a pro-environmental message would produce more positive automatic evaluations and lead people to make the pro-environmental choice of selecting loose rather than packaged products in a hypothetical choice task. As predicted, those primed with an environmental-protection goal automatically evaluated loose products more positively and selected more loose consumer products than a control group. Increased implicit positivity towards loose products mediated the observed behaviour change. Crucially, the effect of environmental goal priming on choices or implicit attitudes towards packaging was not contingent on existing environmental attitudes. Our findings suggest that pro-environmental messages could induce more environmentally friendly consumer choice by leading people to evaluate readily available goal-relevant stimuli positively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

These studies examined memory encoding to determine whether the mere exposure effect could be categorized as a form of conceptual or perceptual implicit priming and, if it was not conceptual or perceptual, whether cardiovascular psychophysiology could reveal its nature. Experiment 1 examined the effects of study phase level of processing on recognition, the mere exposure effect, and word identification implicit priming. Deep relative to shallow processing improved recognition but did not influence the mere exposure effect for nonwords or word identification implicit priming for words. Experiments 2 and 3 examined the effect of study-test changes in font and orientation, respectively, on the mere exposure effect and word identification implicit priming. Different study-test font and orientation reduced word identification implicit priming but had no influence on the mere exposure effect. Experiments 4 and 5 developed and used, respectively, a cardiovascular psychophysiological implicit priming paradigm to examine whether stimulus-specific cardiovascular reactivity at study predicted the mere exposure effect at test. Blood volume pulse change at study was significantly greater for nonwords that were later preferred than for nonwords that were not preferred at test. There was no difference in blood volume pulse change for words at study that were later either identified or not identified at test. Fluency effects, at encoding or retrieval, are an unlikely explanation for these behavioral and cardiovascular findings. The relation of blood volume pulse to affect suggests that an affective process that is not conceptual or perceptual contributes to the mere exposure effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goals are a central feature of narratives, and, thus, narratives may be particularly potent means of goal priming. Two studies examined two features of goal priming (postdelay behavioral assimilation and postfulfillment accessibility) that have been theorized to distinguish goal from semantic construct priming. Across the studies, participants were primed with high achievement, either in a narrative or nonnarrative context and then completed either a behavioral task, followed by a measure of construct accessibility, or a behavioral task after a delay. Indicative of goal priming, narrative-primed participants showed greater postdelay behavioral assimilation and less postfulfillment accessibility than those exposed to the nonnarrative prime. The implications of goal priming from narratives are discussed in relation to both theoretical and methodological issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attachment plays an important role in individual's survival and adaptation from the evolution perspective. According to the Dynamics and Functional Model of Attachment System, researchers have demonstrated that attachment priming is meaningful to the adaptation of individual's development. Based on the discrimination between trait attachment and security attachment priming, this paper discusses the under-mechanism of attachment, namely, the internal working model and secure-base script. Previous researches proved that secure attachment, including secure attachment style and security attachment priming, owns a series of positive effects which were conceptualized as the Broaden-and-Build Cycle of Attachment Security. The positive effects of secure attachment and secure attachment priming were manifested in the following aspects: (i) more competence in emotion regulation; (ii) positive opinion of self and others; (iii) more pro-social behavior and trust; and (iv) less bias towards out-group members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of self-agency is the sense that "I am the one" causing an action. Previous studies showed that multiple cues (such as congruency between prediction and actual effects, and conceptual congruency between preview and effects) contributed to explicit judgments of agency. This study independently manipulated these cues to investigate how such multiple cues of agency are integrated to form an attribution of agency. The results showed that when action became a reliably predictive cue of the occurrence of the outcome through preceding learning trials, then the congruency between prediction and actual effects received a higher weighting for a judgment of agency, and conceptual congruency received a relatively lower weighting. In contrast, without a prior learning session, the conceptual congruency, instead of the congruency between prediction and actual effects, received a relatively higher weighting for a judgment of agency. These results support the optimal cue integration hypothesis that the sense of agency reflects the relative reliability of the respective agency cues in a given situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) applied to the left temporoparietal area (TP) has been investigated as a treatment method for auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) yielding inconsistent results. In vitro studies have indicated that the effects of low-frequency rTMS can be enhanced by a brief pretreatment phase consisting of high-frequency rTMS (i.e., priming rTMS). Objective: The aim of this single-blind, randomized controlled study was to investigate whether the effects of rTMS on AVH can be enhanced with priming rTMS. Methods: Twenty-three patients with medication-resistant AVH were randomized over two groups: one receiving low-frequency rTMS preceded by 5 minutes of 6 Hertz rTMS; and another receiving low-frequency rTMS without priming. Both treatments were directed at the left TP. The total duration of stimulation was equal in the two groups, namely, 15 sessions of 20 minutes each. The severity of AVH and other psychotic features were measured with the aid of the Auditory Hallucination Rating Scale (AHRS), the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales (PSYRATS). Results: The severity of AVH and other psychotic symptoms in the group with priming was not significantly lower after 3 weeks of treatment in comparison to baseline. The group treated with standard rTMS showed a trend toward improvement after 3 weeks of treatment. No significant differences were observed on any of the rating scales between the group with and without priming. Conclusions: This study does not provide evidence that priming rTMS is an effective treatment for AVH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2009 presidential elections from Romania were preceded by an electoral campaign with a strong conflicting character. The characteristics of the campaign produced numerous controversies regarding the practices and strategies used both by the mass media and the political actors. Generally speaking, the discussions about political programs passed into the background while huge spaces were conferred to the conflicts and misunderstandings which often degenerated in ad-hominem attacks between candidates. Another characteristic of the 2009 presidential campaign was related to the role assumed by the mass media, which, in most cases, seemed to disregard the requisite of impartiality while presenting the political actors and events. This research assumes as purposes to substantiate that the electoral campaign received a high visibility in the written press and to investigate which were the coverage strategies used in framing the electoral event. My study starts from a content analysis of the opinion articles written during the entire campaign in three of the most important (both as printed version circulation, and as number of online visitors) generalist newspapers, namely Evenimentul Zilei (Daily Event), Gândul (The Thought) and Jurnalul National (The National Journal). Using an approach related to agenda setting, framing and priming studies, the research assumes as purpose to prove that mass media offered mainly a negative interpretation - attack/conflict type - to the electoral campaign and focused mainly on secondary themes, related rather to the candidates' moral conducts and characters than to their political programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is devoted to the priming concept and the priming effect, as well as their role and consequences for political communication. The concept of priming is considered within cognitive psychology as a cognitive situation. In this situation, the preceding positive incentive can modify the manner in which the following incentive is recognized and processed. Within political communication, priming analysis focuses on the criteria used by the audience in evaluating political objects and reality. The priming concept suggests that the most accessible issues in media broadcasts become the standards of assessing political reality. Priming is regarded as a very meaningful concept within communication science, but studies in this field are relatively rarely, the same with studies on the relationship between priming and the agenda setting hypothesis. This study is an attempt to organize current ideas about the political dimension of priming and to specify the relationship between these two concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative priming indexes an inhibition process that aids target selection by reducing distractor interference. To date, children have produced negative priming only in tasks where distractor response tendencies are consistently greater than or equal to targets and not in tasks containing a substantial proportion of low-conflict distractors. To establish the exact parameters under which children's negative priming attenuates relative to adults, we varied processing demands across 2 experiments involving children and adults. Negative priming was comparable when 100% high-conflict conditions were encountered (Experiment 1) and was intact in adults but not children when a ratio of 50:50 high- to low-conflict conditions was encountered (Experiment 2). Compared with adults, children seem induced to divide attention more generally when low-conflict attentional conditions are included, attenuating negative priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Traditional studies of ethnic relations focus on racialization between Whites and Blacks, or ethnic stratification between Whites and people of color. This study aims at broadening conventional studies of interethnic relations to examine racial attitudes among people who have internalized more than one culture – i.e., the biculturals and multiculturals. Social psychological research suggests that bicultural individuals are capable of switching between two cultural meaning frames depending on contextual demands. Bicultural individuals vary in how well they integrate the two cultural identities internalized in them – i.e., their bicultural identity integration levels (BII levels). Their BII levels lead to either culturally congruent or culturally incongruent behaviors among bicultural individuals. The underlying assumption of linguistic intergroup bias indicates that people tend to describe more abstractly observed positive ingroup behaviors and negative outgroup behaviors and describe more concretely observed negative ingroup behaviors and positive outgroup behaviors. In this study, bicultural Asian American participants are hypothesized to use language of either higher or lower abstraction to describe actions of positive and negative valence performed by either ethnic Asians or European Americans depending on the cultural priming they received and their BII levels. The demonstrated pattern of ingroup enhancement and outgroup derogation of the bicultural participants point out the perceived ingroup/outgroup orientation of these biculturals towards their coethnics and people of the mainstream culture. Effects of the cultural priming and impact of BII levels are also discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]