Semantic and associative networks for representing people
Final Report Abstract
Humans are capable of storing and retrieving vast amounts of person-related information. Several previous studies used semantic priming to examine whether such semantic person knowledge is structured according to categorical relatedness or to associations based on co-occurrence, but came to divergent conclusions. This inconsistency may be partly explained by differences in strategic processing. We examined non-strategic categorical and associative priming in the recognition of famous persons by using masked written names as primes and faces as targets. In addition, we investigated the influence of target repetition on semantic priming by repeating targets across (but not within) three blocks of trials. Reaction times revealed both categorical and associative priming. Additionally, reaction times to targets were significantly correlated with semantic relatedness between prime and target stimuli, as rated by the participants. There was no evidence that semantic priming interacted with repetition priming of targets. These results from masked priming indicate that both categorical and associative priming rely at least partly on non-strategic processes and are modulated by one underlying dimension of semantic relatedness. Keywords: semantic priming; face recognition; name recognition; masked priming
