Autom atic Prim ing Effects for New Associations in Lexical Decision and

Information storage in semantic memory was investigated by looking at automatic priming effects for new associations in two experiments. In the study phase, word pairs were presented in a paired-associate learning task. Lexical decision and perceptual identi® cation were used to examine priming effects during and after the study phase. T here was automatic priming for new associations. T he priming effect was greatly reduced when different semantic tasks were used at study and test compared to when identical tasks were used at study and test. T he results show that new associations in semantic memory can be accessed automatically but are still context dependent. T his suggests that rather than being abstract and static, retrieval from semantic memory interacts dynamically with the context.