After braking comes hasting: reversed effects of indirect associations in 2nd and 4th graders

The Associative Read-Out Model (AROM) suggests that associations between words can be defined by the log likelihood that they occur together more often in sentences than predicted by their single-word frequency. Moreover, semantic relations can be defined by associative spreading across many common associates. Here, we addressed developmental effects of associative and semantic priming. Thus, we manipulated sentence-co-occurrencebased direct (syntagmatic) and common (paradigmatic) associations between prime and target words in 2 and 4 graders. Syntagmatic associations decreased response times and error rates in both, 2 and 4 graders. Paradigmatic associations increased errors rates in 2nd graders, whereas they decreased errors rates in 4th graders. These results suggest that 2 graders profit from syntagmatic, i.e. contiguity-based associations, while a benefit from paradigmatic-semantic relationship probably develops from generalizing across many of these simple associations.