The Density Constraint Also Occurs With Unmasked, Visible Primes in the Lexical Decision Task

Abstract

The presence of stronger masked repetition/form priming effects for words with few orthographic neighbors than for words with many orthographic neighbors has been called the density constraint (Forster et al., 1987; Perea & Rosa, in press). Previous research suggests that, when target words are presented for long enough to allow complete retrieval and conscious identification, form-priming effects with masked and unmasked primes may qualitatively differ (Forster & Veres, 1998; Segui & Grainger, 1990). To analyze this possibility, the relationships between repetition/form priming effects and neighborhood density were analyzed in a lexical decision experiment with visible, unmasked primes at a 300-ms stimulus-onset asynchrony. The results show that repetition and form priming effects are smaller for words with many orthographic neighbors. The implications of these results for determining how neighbors affect the identification of a word are discussed.