We tested levodopa effects on lateralized direct and indirect semantic priming in 40 healthy right-handed men in a placebo-controlled, double-blind procedure. Crucially, priming was also analyzed as a function of participants' positive schizotypal features (magical ideation, MI), previously found to be associated with an enhanced semantic spreading activation (SSA) within the right hemisphere. ...

We combined for the first time electrophysiological measures and masked priming technique in sentential context, by setting up a cross-modal masked priming paradigm involving the auditory presentation of sentences. ERPs were time-locked to an auditorily presented word that was preceded by a repeated, related or unrelated pattern masked prime. We registered a two-way N400-difference between unre...

Several experiments are described in which priming or implicit memory for visual objects was investigated. In one set of studies, subjects were shown line drawings of unfamiliar objects that were either structurally possible or structurally impossible. Implicit memory was assessed with a possible/impossible object-decision task, and explicit memory was assessed with a recognition task. The resu...

Models of automatic priming of word identification can be divided into those based on associative relations (e.g., spreading activation) and others based on semantic similarity (e.g., distributed models). In three experiments, associative relatedness was manipulated by presenting asymmetrically associated word pairs in both their forward and backward directions. Priming was comparable in both d...

Like true memories, false memories are capable of priming answers to insight-based problems. Recent research has attempted to extend this paradigm to more advanced problem-solving tasks, including those involving verbal analogical reasoning. However, these experiments are constrained inasmuch as problem solutions could be generated via spreading activation mechanisms (much like false memories t...

Recent evidence suggests that priming of objects across different images (abstract priming) and priming of specific images of an object (form-specific priming) are mediated by dissociable neural processing subsystems that operate in parallel and are predominantly linked to left and right hemispheric processing, respectively [Marsolek, C. J. Dissociable neural subsystems underlie abstract and sp...

Studies using semantic priming paradigms to measure the integrity of the features underlying concepts in semantic dementia (SD) reported differential impairment, in that functional features appeared to be more robust to brain damage than other features, such as perceptual ones. However, these prior studies were single case reports and the inclusion of too many heterogeneous features under the "...

Prime pictures of emotional scenes appeared in parafoveal vision, followed by probe pictures either congruent or incongruent in affective valence. Participants responded whether the probe was pleasant or unpleasant (or whether it portrayed people or animals). Shorter latencies for congruent than for incongruent prime-probe pairs revealed affective priming. This occurred even when visual attenti...

The present research examines the nature of the different processes that have been proposed to underlie semantic priming. Specifically, it has been argued that priming arises as a result of automatic target activation and/or the use of strategies like prospective expectancy generation and retrospective semantic matching. This article investigates the extent that these processes rely on cognitiv...