Primed to (finally) find out: Uncovering the mental lexicon via semantic priming

When it comes to language, context is everything. Indeed, the meaning of a word or a sentence can change considerably when taken out of context. As a consequence, the contextual nature of language has been the topic of much research. In this project, I will examine how a single word creates a context for a second word. It is a well-known finding that people recognize a word (e.g., dog) faster when it is preceded by a related word (e.g., cat). This phenomenon, called semantic priming, gives us insight into the organization of people’s mental dictionary. In other words, it tells us which words are related and how they are related. Although semantic priming is a well-established phenomenon, several crucial issues remain unresolved. The aim of this research proposal is to address a number of burning questions. First of all, I will examine how stable priming is over time. For instance, suppose someone is 50 ms faster to recognize the word dog after s/he first sees the word cat, instead of first seeing an unrelated word like car. A first project examines whether this effect remains relatively stable if the same person is tested again a month later. Secondly, I will empirically investigate the processes that underlie the semantic priming effect. I want to know what kind of word relations produce a priming effect to get an idea about the structure of people’s mental dictionary. In a final project, I will develop a cognitive model to help unravel the origin of the priming effect.