Semantic/syntactic priming effects and their processing stages

Abstract

Three priming experiments were conducted to investigate associative and syntactic information processing in the Japanese language. Unlike in English, associative relation and syntactic plausibility can be manipulated independently. Subjects were given either a lexical decision or naming task because previous studies suggest that these tasks are sensitive to different processing stages. Two prime-target SOAs. 250 ms and 700 ms, were used. The results revealed that syntactic plausibility of associated prime-target pairs was processed differently from that of unassociated ones. When prime-target pairs were unassociated, syntactic plausibility priming was found with the 700 ms SOA in the lexical decision task, but no priming was found in the naming task. This result supports the previous claim that syntactic information is processed post-lexically. In contrast, when prime-target pairs were associated, syntactic plausibility priming was found both with 250 ms and 700 ms SOAs not only in the lexical decision but in the naming task. This suggests that syntactic plausibility of associated prime-target pairs is processed at the lexical rather than post-lexical stage.