DO STRATEGIC PRIMING PROCESSES DIFFER FOR CATEGORY VS. ASSOCIATIVE PRIMING? AN EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS STUDY OF PROACTIVE EXPECTANCY STRATEGIES.

Abstract

An extension of Becker's 1980 semantic priming study challenges the Verification Model by proposing that there are two different priming processes, one at a perceptual level and one at a semantic level. Participants performed a lexical decision task with a category-dominant or associative-dominant list while ERPs were recorded. We predicted that the associative effects would be mediated by facilitation and would influence the N170 and that the categorical effects would be indexed by the N300 for inhibitory effects and the N400 for facilitatory effects. Inhibition was not seen for unrelated targets in the categorical condition. The fillers in the categorical condition produced an inhibition effect but not a N300 effect. The N170 effect was not significant. An N400 effect was observed only for the associative list. It is suggested that this finding is consistent with a previously proposed (Franklin, et al., 2007) post-lexical semantic expectancy updating account for the N400.