Using semantic memory to find vs create a mood.

Ss produced words from semantic memory which satisfied certain constraints. In Experiment I, a noun category plus a number and a letter were presented (e.g., ANIMAL-I-D, FRUIT-P-3), and S produced an instance of the category which had the given letter in the position designated by the given number. Faster responses occurred when the position cue occurred before the letter rather than after it. In Experiments II and III, Ss saw only a number and a letter (e.g., l-D, P-3) and were required to produce any word that had the given letter in the position designated by the given number. Order of the position and letter cues did not influence response times. The effect of order in one case and not the other strongly suggests that producing a word that satisfies certain semantic constraints involves a different process from producing a word that satisfies only certain orthographic restrictions.