Does pizza prime coin? Perceptual priming in lexical decision and pronunciation.

In 6 experiments the authors investigated priming for perceptually related word pairs (i.e., words that refer to objects with the same shape such as pizza-coin), trying to replicate earlier findings by R. Schreuder et al (see record 1985-06198-001) while avoiding some of the methodological problems that were present in that study. University students participated in the experiments. Under standard conditions no perceptual priming was obtained. However, in all experiments priming for associated pairs was found. Only after activation tasks that focused on perceptual features was priming for perceptually related word pairs found in pronunciation. Perceptual priming was also obtained in lexical decision after activation tasks, but only when strong associates were not presented in the experiment. The results show that priming for perceptually related word pairs is not a general finding.