Skip to main content

Stephen T Paul

Robert Morris University, School of Social Sciences, Faculty Member

Followers

92

Following

2

Co-author

1

Public Views

Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Kansas (1992). Post-doc in cognitive aging at Washington University (1992-1995). Faculty position at Mississippi State University (1995-2001). Faculty position at Robert Morris University (2001-Date).
Supervisors: George Kellas and David Balota

less

April Bleske-Rechek

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Emerson College

Ernesto Rottoli

Gianstefano Riva

Washington State University

Suvarna Lakshmi G

The English and Foreign Languages University

Tharindu Weerasinghe

University of Kelaniya

Michigan State University

InterestsView All (6)

Uploads

Papers by Stephen T Paul

Demonstrating inferential and modeling processes in cognitive psychology

Academia Letters, 2021

A problem that teachers of scientific thinking encounter is that students find the logic of some ... more A problem that teachers of scientific thinking encounter is that students find the logic of some research approaches easier to follow. To some degree, this must be a function of the complexity of the study as well as the motivation of the student to understand the logic of the research design. However, another contributor to ease of comprehension is the degree to which the research design requires the reader to draw inferences from research design and data to conclusions. Research on reading comprehension has shown that individuals who cannot draw the appropriate inferences have the poorest comprehension (e. g., Cain & Oakhill, 1999; Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001). It stands to reason that research outcomes that indirectly reflect the influences of one or more independent variables on a hypothesized construct will be particularly troublesome to some subset of students. This is also troublesome in a broader sense, given the degree to which science leans on "strong inference" for advances (as outlined by Platt, l964). Traditionally, in our discipline (psychology), most undergraduate courses focus on explaining observable behaviors. Invariably, students have an easy time understanding research on concepts like "bystander effects" when the research design directly measures and shows changes in helping behavior as a function of perceived number of others (cf. Darley & Latané, 1968). At the other extreme, and most germane to the present discussion, are classes (e.g., cognitive psychology) that require more abstract and inferential thinking in order to understand how the results of directly observable behaviors reveals the workings of otherwise invisible processes (i.e., Kant's transcendental method). We could argue that students have become accustomed to thinking about research and research logic in a relatively less demanding way. Many research questions, for instance, in

A Technology Classroom Review Tool for General Psychology

Sage, Nov 20, 2009

The CLEP Program: An Evaluation and Assessment at a Small Private University

Mid Western Educational Researcher, 2007

How Much to Eat a Worm? Personal Perspective Influences Value

Thorndike asked employed and unemployed volunteers how little money they would be willing to acce... more Thorndike asked employed and unemployed volunteers how little money they would be willing to accept as compensation to suffer certain pains, deprivations, frustrations, and repulsive acts. The employed consistently demanded unreasonably more money than the unemployed. The present study attempted to account for such excessive requests by manipulating evaluator perspective: Impartial judge vs. Wronged victim. Results showed that, much like Thorndike's employed subjects, wronged victims asked for relatively huge amounts. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

Chapter 3 Contextual Feature Activation and Meaning Access

Advances in Psychology, 1991

A Technology Classroom Review Tool for General Psychology

Teaching of Psychology, 2006

... University of Akron Alma M. Hollis Robert Morris University We developed a computerized game ... more

An initial search for visual overshadowing

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2012

A consistent, albeit fragile, finding over the last couple of decades has been that verbalization... more A consistent, albeit fragile, finding over the last couple of decades has been that verbalization of hard-to-verbalize stimuli, such as faces, interferes with subsequent recognition of the described target stimulus. We sought to elicit a similar phenomenon whereby visualization interferes with verbal recognition--that is, visual overshadowing. We randomly assigned participants (n = 180) to either concrete (easy to visualize) or abstract (difficult to visualize) sentence conditions. Following presentation, participants were asked to verbalize the sentence, visualize the sentence, or work on a filler task. As predicted, visualization of an abstract verbal stimulus resulted in significantly lower recognition accuracy; unexpectedly, however, so did verbalization. The findings are discussed within the framework of fuzzy-trace theory.

Search for semantic inhibition failure during sentence comprehension by younger and older adults

Psychology and Aging, 1996

Page 1. Psychology and Aging 1996, Vol. II , No. 1, 10-20 Copyright 1996 by the American Psycholo... more

A Time Course View of Sentence Priming Effects

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2000

Meaning activation was estimated during (standard naming) and after (delayed naming) target prese... more Meaning activation was estimated during (standard naming) and after (delayed naming) target presentation to chart the time course of priming effects during reading comprehension. Using sentences biasing homographs toward their dominant and subordinate meanings, two experiments evaluated context effects across three naming-cue delays: immediate, baseline, base-line+600 ms all at a 0-ms interstimulus interval. When participants named a target immediately as it was presented, results converged with previous findings demonstrating initial context-sensitive meaning activation. The delayed naming conditions revealed little post-access influences for dominant contexts. Subordinate contexts, however, provided the strongest evidence of continued (or sustained) processing. It was concluded that context has immediate and automatic effects on initial meaning activation, after which, strategies are invoked for fine-tuning an interpretation of a sentence and integrating it with new information.

Influence of contextual features on the activation of ambiguous word meanings

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1992

Three studies examined whether initial meaning activation is sensitive to context. Experiment 1 d... more Three studies examined whether initial meaning activation is sensitive to context. Experiment 1 demonstrated that contextually appropriate targets were activated more than inappropriate targets. Experiment 2 evaluated activation across intervals of 0, 300, and 600 ms. Constraining sentences activated contextually appropriate meanings over inappropriate meanings. This was maintained across the intervals for highly salient targets. Less-salient targets, although initially activated, were no longer activated 300 ms following the homograph. Experiment 3 converged on context-sensitive activation following a 50-ms exposure of the sentence-final homograph. Conclusions are (a) initial meaning activation can be sensitive to context, (b) when a homograph is instantiated, it is congruent with a broad scope of targets, and (c) less-salient targets receive less activation over the time course.

Scope of Word Meaning Activation During Sentence Processing by Young and Older Adults

Experimental Aging Research, 1995

In a naming experiment, we examined word meaning activation on-line during sentence processing by... more In a naming experiment, we examined word meaning activation on-line during sentence processing by younger and older adults. Sentences were biased to either the most or least frequently used meaning of a sentence-final ambiguous word. In order to determine the scope of initial meaning activation, targets represented either high- or low-salient semantic relationships to a single sense of the ambiguous word in context. Both age groups evidenced context-dependent activation of word meaning. In addition, context activated a wide scope of meaning that included both high- and low-salience aspects of the ambiguous words. These results contradict predictions based on the inhibition deficit hypothesis (Hasher &amp; Zacks, 1988). However, they are compatible with an interactive activation model of language comprehension that does not discriminate among age groups.

PsychOUT! A Technology Classroom Review-Tool For General Psychology and Beyond1

academics.rmu.edu

A computerized classroom game was developed in response to a brief review of the literature on te... more

Effects of Apophenia on Multiple-Choice Exam Performance

SAGE Open, 2014

It has been argued that the ability to distinguish patterns (i.e., "sameness" from "differentness... more It has been argued that the ability to distinguish patterns (i.e., "sameness" from "differentness") holds adaptive value for humans and animals (Wasserman, Young, & Cook, 2004). Indeed, the apparent need to identify patterns is so strong as to produce relatively frequent (and newsworthy) accounts of pareidolia such as the "face on mars" and religious images burned into grilled cheese sandwiches. The broad term for identifying or perceiving patterns in random or meaningless data, where such patterns are neither present nor intended, is apophenia (cf. Carroll, 2003). To the extent that students perceive underlying patterns (whether intentional or not) within the answer keys of multiple-choice exams, outcomes unrelated to content knowledge seem likely. Although there are numerous exam formats available, multiple-choice exams are particularly popular among students and teachers for differing reasons. Students tend to prefer multiple-choice questions because recognition-based performance is often superior to recall-based performance (Hart, 1965). For teachers, advantages of multiple-choice exams include ease of construction, as many instructor resources linked to textbooks include test generators, which automate a great deal of the process of test building. This benefit extends to online learning management systems such as Blackboard given that most textbook publishers provide textbook specific test-bank modules that can be imported directly into course shells. In addition, multiple-choice exams are almost always less effortful and less time-consuming to score than written response exams. However, despite these apparent advantages, a great deal of research has shown that there are many pitfalls to avoid when constructing effective multiple-choice exams (Haladyna & Downing, 1989; Haladyna, Downing, & Rodriguez, 2002; Hogan & Murphy, 2007). Among these pitfalls are the potential construction biases that can emerge when instructors over-represent or under-use certain response options. As Mitchell (1974) showed, some response alternatives tend to be either over-represented (often "C") or under-represented (often "A") in exams. More recently, Attali and Bar-Hillel (2003) showed that both test takers and test makers appear to be biased in favor of answer choices located centrally among the alternatives in a ratio of 3 or 4 to 1. This bias will produce answer keys that are unbalanced in the sense that not all answer choices are equally represented. However, evidence regarding whether this concern is important or not is both mixed and outdated. For 556628S GOXXX10.

Aging and language performance: From isolated words to multiple sentence contexts

Advances in Psychology, 1995

86 LM Stadtlander Whaley, CP (1978). Word-nonword classification time. Journal of Verbal Learning... more

Aging and language performance: From isolated words to multiple sentence contexts

Advances in Psychology, 1995

86 LM Stadtlander Whaley, CP (1978). Word-nonword classification time. Journal of Verbal Learning... more

Sources of sentence constraint on lexical ambiguity resolution

by Hoang Vu and Stephen T Paul

Memory & cognition, 1998

Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of a... more Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of ambiguous words (e.g., homonyms) as a function of prior information. The majority of the literature on context effects has supported either the principles of modularity, in which an autonomous lexical processor (Fodor, 1983; Forster, 1979) is uninfluenced by syntax and semantics (see, e.g.,

Sources of sentence constraint on lexical ambiguity resolution

Memory & cognition, 1998

Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of a... more Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of ambiguous words (e.g., homonyms) as a function of prior information. The majority of the literature on context effects has supported either the principles of modularity, in which an autonomous lexical processor (Fodor, 1983; Forster, 1979) is uninfluenced by syntax and semantics (see, e.g.,

Summation of activation: Evidence from multiple primes that converge and diverge within semantic memory

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1996

Six experiments addressed the combinatorial influence of multiple related primes in naming, lexic... more Six experiments addressed the combinatorial influence of multiple related primes in naming, lexical decision, and relatedness judgment performance. Primes either converged on a single semantic representation (e.g., LION-STRIPES-TIGER) or diverged onto distinct semantic representations (e.g., KIDNEY-PIANO-ORGAN). The facilitatory influence of 2 related primes was well predicted by the sum of the influences from the single-related-prime conditions (a) for both convergent and divergent primes, (b) in lexical-decision and naming, (c) across varying prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies, and (d) under target-degradation conditions that increased the priming effects. The relatedness-judgment task yielded an additive pattern of priming for convergent prime conditions; however, an underadditive pattern of priming was found for divergent prime conditions. Discussion focuses on the role of attentional systems that modulate the type of information used to perform a given task.

Priming effects on lexical access and decision processes: A signal-detection analysis

Psychological Research, 1992

to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the resul... more to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the result of post-access processes. Experiment 1, in which prime-relatedness was varied within subjects, found changes in target sensitivity (d') without corresponding changes in the response criterion. This outcome was interpreted as evidence that prior context facilitates lexical access, whereas post-access contributions remain constant across conditions. When primerelatedness was varied between subjects in Experiment 2, the lexical-decision task showed differing context effects on access processes as well as on post-access processes. It was concluded that subjects adopt a single response criterion suited to maximize task performance. The particular response criterion adopted is a function of the stimulus set rather than a function of the relationship between prime and target on any single trial. Finally, it was concluded that post-access strategies alone are insufficient to account for context effects obtained when typical lexical-decision-task procedures are used, or to account for the magnitude of the differences obtained between the present experiments.

Priming effects on lexical access and decision processes: A signal-detection analysis

Psychological Research, 1992

to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the resul... more to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the result of post-access processes. Experiment 1, in which prime-relatedness was varied within subjects, found changes in target sensitivity (d') without corresponding changes in the response criterion. This outcome was interpreted as evidence that prior context facilitates lexical access, whereas post-access contributions remain constant across conditions. When primerelatedness was varied between subjects in Experiment 2, the lexical-decision task showed differing context effects on access processes as well as on post-access processes. It was concluded that subjects adopt a single response criterion suited to maximize task performance. The particular response criterion adopted is a function of the stimulus set rather than a function of the relationship between prime and target on any single trial. Finally, it was concluded that post-access strategies alone are insufficient to account for context effects obtained when typical lexical-decision-task procedures are used, or to account for the magnitude of the differences obtained between the present experiments.

Demonstrating inferential and modeling processes in cognitive psychology

Academia Letters, 2021

A problem that teachers of scientific thinking encounter is that students find the logic of some ... more A problem that teachers of scientific thinking encounter is that students find the logic of some research approaches easier to follow. To some degree, this must be a function of the complexity of the study as well as the motivation of the student to understand the logic of the research design. However, another contributor to ease of comprehension is the degree to which the research design requires the reader to draw inferences from research design and data to conclusions. Research on reading comprehension has shown that individuals who cannot draw the appropriate inferences have the poorest comprehension (e. g., Cain & Oakhill, 1999; Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001). It stands to reason that research outcomes that indirectly reflect the influences of one or more independent variables on a hypothesized construct will be particularly troublesome to some subset of students. This is also troublesome in a broader sense, given the degree to which science leans on "strong inference" for advances (as outlined by Platt, l964). Traditionally, in our discipline (psychology), most undergraduate courses focus on explaining observable behaviors. Invariably, students have an easy time understanding research on concepts like "bystander effects" when the research design directly measures and shows changes in helping behavior as a function of perceived number of others (cf. Darley & Latané, 1968). At the other extreme, and most germane to the present discussion, are classes (e.g., cognitive psychology) that require more abstract and inferential thinking in order to understand how the results of directly observable behaviors reveals the workings of otherwise invisible processes (i.e., Kant's transcendental method). We could argue that students have become accustomed to thinking about research and research logic in a relatively less demanding way. Many research questions, for instance, in

A Technology Classroom Review Tool for General Psychology

Sage, Nov 20, 2009

The CLEP Program: An Evaluation and Assessment at a Small Private University

Mid Western Educational Researcher, 2007

How Much to Eat a Worm? Personal Perspective Influences Value

Thorndike asked employed and unemployed volunteers how little money they would be willing to acce... more Thorndike asked employed and unemployed volunteers how little money they would be willing to accept as compensation to suffer certain pains, deprivations, frustrations, and repulsive acts. The employed consistently demanded unreasonably more money than the unemployed. The present study attempted to account for such excessive requests by manipulating evaluator perspective: Impartial judge vs. Wronged victim. Results showed that, much like Thorndike's employed subjects, wronged victims asked for relatively huge amounts. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

Chapter 3 Contextual Feature Activation and Meaning Access

Advances in Psychology, 1991

A Technology Classroom Review Tool for General Psychology

Teaching of Psychology, 2006

... University of Akron Alma M. Hollis Robert Morris University We developed a computerized game ... more

An initial search for visual overshadowing

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2012

A consistent, albeit fragile, finding over the last couple of decades has been that verbalization... more A consistent, albeit fragile, finding over the last couple of decades has been that verbalization of hard-to-verbalize stimuli, such as faces, interferes with subsequent recognition of the described target stimulus. We sought to elicit a similar phenomenon whereby visualization interferes with verbal recognition--that is, visual overshadowing. We randomly assigned participants (n = 180) to either concrete (easy to visualize) or abstract (difficult to visualize) sentence conditions. Following presentation, participants were asked to verbalize the sentence, visualize the sentence, or work on a filler task. As predicted, visualization of an abstract verbal stimulus resulted in significantly lower recognition accuracy; unexpectedly, however, so did verbalization. The findings are discussed within the framework of fuzzy-trace theory.

Search for semantic inhibition failure during sentence comprehension by younger and older adults

Psychology and Aging, 1996

Page 1. Psychology and Aging 1996, Vol. II , No. 1, 10-20 Copyright 1996 by the American Psycholo... more

A Time Course View of Sentence Priming Effects

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2000

Meaning activation was estimated during (standard naming) and after (delayed naming) target prese... more Meaning activation was estimated during (standard naming) and after (delayed naming) target presentation to chart the time course of priming effects during reading comprehension. Using sentences biasing homographs toward their dominant and subordinate meanings, two experiments evaluated context effects across three naming-cue delays: immediate, baseline, base-line+600 ms all at a 0-ms interstimulus interval. When participants named a target immediately as it was presented, results converged with previous findings demonstrating initial context-sensitive meaning activation. The delayed naming conditions revealed little post-access influences for dominant contexts. Subordinate contexts, however, provided the strongest evidence of continued (or sustained) processing. It was concluded that context has immediate and automatic effects on initial meaning activation, after which, strategies are invoked for fine-tuning an interpretation of a sentence and integrating it with new information.

Influence of contextual features on the activation of ambiguous word meanings

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1992

Three studies examined whether initial meaning activation is sensitive to context. Experiment 1 d... more Three studies examined whether initial meaning activation is sensitive to context. Experiment 1 demonstrated that contextually appropriate targets were activated more than inappropriate targets. Experiment 2 evaluated activation across intervals of 0, 300, and 600 ms. Constraining sentences activated contextually appropriate meanings over inappropriate meanings. This was maintained across the intervals for highly salient targets. Less-salient targets, although initially activated, were no longer activated 300 ms following the homograph. Experiment 3 converged on context-sensitive activation following a 50-ms exposure of the sentence-final homograph. Conclusions are (a) initial meaning activation can be sensitive to context, (b) when a homograph is instantiated, it is congruent with a broad scope of targets, and (c) less-salient targets receive less activation over the time course.

Scope of Word Meaning Activation During Sentence Processing by Young and Older Adults

Experimental Aging Research, 1995

In a naming experiment, we examined word meaning activation on-line during sentence processing by... more In a naming experiment, we examined word meaning activation on-line during sentence processing by younger and older adults. Sentences were biased to either the most or least frequently used meaning of a sentence-final ambiguous word. In order to determine the scope of initial meaning activation, targets represented either high- or low-salient semantic relationships to a single sense of the ambiguous word in context. Both age groups evidenced context-dependent activation of word meaning. In addition, context activated a wide scope of meaning that included both high- and low-salience aspects of the ambiguous words. These results contradict predictions based on the inhibition deficit hypothesis (Hasher &amp; Zacks, 1988). However, they are compatible with an interactive activation model of language comprehension that does not discriminate among age groups.

PsychOUT! A Technology Classroom Review-Tool For General Psychology and Beyond1

academics.rmu.edu

A computerized classroom game was developed in response to a brief review of the literature on te... more

Effects of Apophenia on Multiple-Choice Exam Performance

SAGE Open, 2014

It has been argued that the ability to distinguish patterns (i.e., "sameness" from "differentness... more It has been argued that the ability to distinguish patterns (i.e., "sameness" from "differentness") holds adaptive value for humans and animals (Wasserman, Young, & Cook, 2004). Indeed, the apparent need to identify patterns is so strong as to produce relatively frequent (and newsworthy) accounts of pareidolia such as the "face on mars" and religious images burned into grilled cheese sandwiches. The broad term for identifying or perceiving patterns in random or meaningless data, where such patterns are neither present nor intended, is apophenia (cf. Carroll, 2003). To the extent that students perceive underlying patterns (whether intentional or not) within the answer keys of multiple-choice exams, outcomes unrelated to content knowledge seem likely. Although there are numerous exam formats available, multiple-choice exams are particularly popular among students and teachers for differing reasons. Students tend to prefer multiple-choice questions because recognition-based performance is often superior to recall-based performance (Hart, 1965). For teachers, advantages of multiple-choice exams include ease of construction, as many instructor resources linked to textbooks include test generators, which automate a great deal of the process of test building. This benefit extends to online learning management systems such as Blackboard given that most textbook publishers provide textbook specific test-bank modules that can be imported directly into course shells. In addition, multiple-choice exams are almost always less effortful and less time-consuming to score than written response exams. However, despite these apparent advantages, a great deal of research has shown that there are many pitfalls to avoid when constructing effective multiple-choice exams (Haladyna & Downing, 1989; Haladyna, Downing, & Rodriguez, 2002; Hogan & Murphy, 2007). Among these pitfalls are the potential construction biases that can emerge when instructors over-represent or under-use certain response options. As Mitchell (1974) showed, some response alternatives tend to be either over-represented (often "C") or under-represented (often "A") in exams. More recently, Attali and Bar-Hillel (2003) showed that both test takers and test makers appear to be biased in favor of answer choices located centrally among the alternatives in a ratio of 3 or 4 to 1. This bias will produce answer keys that are unbalanced in the sense that not all answer choices are equally represented. However, evidence regarding whether this concern is important or not is both mixed and outdated. For 556628S GOXXX10.

Aging and language performance: From isolated words to multiple sentence contexts

Advances in Psychology, 1995

86 LM Stadtlander Whaley, CP (1978). Word-nonword classification time. Journal of Verbal Learning... more

Aging and language performance: From isolated words to multiple sentence contexts

Advances in Psychology, 1995

86 LM Stadtlander Whaley, CP (1978). Word-nonword classification time. Journal of Verbal Learning... more

Sources of sentence constraint on lexical ambiguity resolution

by Hoang Vu and Stephen T Paul

Memory & cognition, 1998

Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of a... more Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of ambiguous words (e.g., homonyms) as a function of prior information. The majority of the literature on context effects has supported either the principles of modularity, in which an autonomous lexical processor (Fodor, 1983; Forster, 1979) is uninfluenced by syntax and semantics (see, e.g.,

Sources of sentence constraint on lexical ambiguity resolution

Memory & cognition, 1998

Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of a... more Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has dealt primarily with activation of the meanings of ambiguous words (e.g., homonyms) as a function of prior information. The majority of the literature on context effects has supported either the principles of modularity, in which an autonomous lexical processor (Fodor, 1983; Forster, 1979) is uninfluenced by syntax and semantics (see, e.g.,

Summation of activation: Evidence from multiple primes that converge and diverge within semantic memory

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1996

Six experiments addressed the combinatorial influence of multiple related primes in naming, lexic... more Six experiments addressed the combinatorial influence of multiple related primes in naming, lexical decision, and relatedness judgment performance. Primes either converged on a single semantic representation (e.g., LION-STRIPES-TIGER) or diverged onto distinct semantic representations (e.g., KIDNEY-PIANO-ORGAN). The facilitatory influence of 2 related primes was well predicted by the sum of the influences from the single-related-prime conditions (a) for both convergent and divergent primes, (b) in lexical-decision and naming, (c) across varying prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies, and (d) under target-degradation conditions that increased the priming effects. The relatedness-judgment task yielded an additive pattern of priming for convergent prime conditions; however, an underadditive pattern of priming was found for divergent prime conditions. Discussion focuses on the role of attentional systems that modulate the type of information used to perform a given task.

Priming effects on lexical access and decision processes: A signal-detection analysis

Psychological Research, 1992

to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the resul... more to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the result of post-access processes. Experiment 1, in which prime-relatedness was varied within subjects, found changes in target sensitivity (d') without corresponding changes in the response criterion. This outcome was interpreted as evidence that prior context facilitates lexical access, whereas post-access contributions remain constant across conditions. When primerelatedness was varied between subjects in Experiment 2, the lexical-decision task showed differing context effects on access processes as well as on post-access processes. It was concluded that subjects adopt a single response criterion suited to maximize task performance. The particular response criterion adopted is a function of the stimulus set rather than a function of the relationship between prime and target on any single trial. Finally, it was concluded that post-access strategies alone are insufficient to account for context effects obtained when typical lexical-decision-task procedures are used, or to account for the magnitude of the differences obtained between the present experiments.

Priming effects on lexical access and decision processes: A signal-detection analysis

Psychological Research, 1992

to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the resul... more to examine the assumption that in a lexical-decision task context effects are primarily the result of post-access processes. Experiment 1, in which prime-relatedness was varied within subjects, found changes in target sensitivity (d') without corresponding changes in the response criterion. This outcome was interpreted as evidence that prior context facilitates lexical access, whereas post-access contributions remain constant across conditions. When primerelatedness was varied between subjects in Experiment 2, the lexical-decision task showed differing context effects on access processes as well as on post-access processes. It was concluded that subjects adopt a single response criterion suited to maximize task performance. The particular response criterion adopted is a function of the stimulus set rather than a function of the relationship between prime and target on any single trial. Finally, it was concluded that post-access strategies alone are insufficient to account for context effects obtained when typical lexical-decision-task procedures are used, or to account for the magnitude of the differences obtained between the present experiments.