Masked priming effects in semantic categorization are independent of category sizeVan den Bussche, Eva and Reynvoet, Bert (2006) Masked priming effects in semantic categorization are independent of category size. In: 10th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, 23-26 June 2006, Oxford. Full text available as:
AbstractThe question whether subliminal primes can activate their semantic meaning or not is still very alive today. Three different competing theories have tried to account for the often inconsistent research results: the semantic categorization hypothesis, where subliminal primes are assumed to be processed in a series of processing stages, including semantic categorization; the direct motor specification hypothesis, which hypothesizes that subjects can unconsciously develop automatized stimulus-response mappings, bypassing semantic access; and finally the category search model which states that due to the impossibility of an exhaustive search of all members of a broad category, subliminal priming can only be obtained for small categories. The present study aimed to shed light on these different points of view by examining the role of category size in response congruency effects when novel primes are used. Three experiments were conducted, using both small and broad categories, both small and large stimulus sets and various tasks. A transparent pattern of results emerged: significant priming effects were obtained across different tasks, irrespective of category size and irrespective of stimulus set size. The findings are discussed in terms of the three theoretical frameworks. Summarizing the results, we conclude that neither the direct motor specification hypothesis, nor the category search model can explain our findings. It becomes clear that the present results provide strong evidence in favour of the semantic categorization hypothesis, which assumes semantic processing of subliminal primes.
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