The role of conceptual processing in perceptual identification performance
Michael B. Wasdell · Scholars Commons (Wilfrid Laurier University) · 1991
The present research examined the extent to which conceptual processing done at study contributed to perceptual identification priming in an associative priming paradigm. Subjects performed either an elaborative (sentence generation) or non-elaborative (vowel comparison) encoding task on unrelated cue-target pairs presented in a study list. On a subsequent perceptual identification test, old target words were paired with their study trial cues (same context), other study trial cues (rearranged context), novel cue words (new context) and non-word cues (no context). A conceptual processing effect would be evidenced by a significantly higher level of the same context priming in the elaborative encoding condition relative to all other conditions. The results revealed that although the level of same context priming was generally higher than that of the other context conditions, there were no differences in the level of priming between the two encoding groups. An analysis of errors suggested that the enhanced same context priming in each of the two encoding groups may be mediated by different processes. Furthermore, the results of this experiment support the hypothesis that priming in the perceptual identification test will benefit to the extent to which there is a match between study and test trial operations.