Beyond binary judgments: Prime validity modulates masked repetition priming in the naming task

Abstract

Bodner and Masson (2001) reported that masked repetition priming of lexical decisions is often greater when the repetition primes appear on a high, rather than a low, proportion of trials. They suggested that processing episodes are constructed for masked primes and that recruitment of those episodes is affected by the probability that the prime will be useful for processing the target. If context-sensitive recruitment of primes is a general mechanism, a similar effect should also occur in a nonbinary response task. In accord with this hypothesis, using the naming task and a 45-msec prime duration, we show that masked repetition priming effects for uppercase words, case-alternated words, and pseudohomophones were greater when .8 rather than .2 of the trials involved repetition (vs. unrelated) primes. Prime validity effects are consistent with a memory recruitment view of priming but may be difficult to explain using activation-based mechanisms.