Semantic Priming Assignment | Get Paper Help

Rewrite the introduction and discussion to be more concise and reduce the word count. The abstract, reference list, method and results section of the report have been completed and attached as guideline only. The report is to be formatted in APA style

Introduction

The connection between stimulus, attention, consciousness, and brain function

remains a highly studied, controversial area in cognitive psychology. The reading and

processing of words can highly depend on whether a person has had a prior conscious

perception of them or they perceive them for the first time. Conscious processing, however, is

traditionally known as the extent to which important stimuli is given selective attentive space

(Deutsch & Deutsch, 1963). Consciously, when a person is processing symbolic stimuli such

as words, it requires an extensive cortical process. Word processing starts in the ventral visual

pathway then processing to the lexical and lastly through semantic access (Gaillard, Del Cul,

Naccache, Vinckier, Cohen & Dehaene, 2006).  Visual consciousness and the rate words are

detected depend on perceptual awareness, individual personality traits, lexical decision, and

working memory. This requires both top-down and bottom-up to the level process. These

processes are found to interact with each other during this conscious process.  Processing

stimuli largely occur within a conscious awareness as opposed to an unconscious one

(Deutsch & Deutsch, 1963).

Unconsciously, words are not processed to the same extent as conscious words, but

they may still influence conscious behaviour through reaction time and accuracy. When being

exposed to words influences a response to another word without conscious guidance or intent,

priming occurs. However, if the words are semantically related such as table and chair, or

unrelated like table and tiger, semantic priming occurs. In visual word recognition, semantic

priming is used as a powerful tool to research cognitive processes relating to memory,

language, and attention. Some words, however, are not prime – target pairs but the human

mind constitutes them as related. Examples of these kinds of words are book and worm or

sky and blue. The priming effect has been proven to occur for word pairs that are

associatively related, categorically related or simply look or sound similar (Okubo & Ogawa,

2013). Previous studies have been conducted by Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) showing

that the time participants took to decide that ‘nurse’ is a word quickened if it was

immediately followed by the word ‘doctor’ rather than the word ‘butter’.  This information

suggests that unconscious processing of stimuli is an automatic process and is known as

semantic activation.

 

The semantic activation occurs at the deepest level of processing, Neely and Khan

(2001) critical re-evaluation highlight semantic activation is indeed automatic, words

automatically activate their meanings once read slightly, semantic activation is unaffected by

the intention for it to occur and by the amount and quality of the attentional resource

allocated to it. When a participant misses the prime word and perceives it unconsciously, it

may not be processed to the same extent as a conscious word. Existing on a semantic masked

priming level it may still influence our conscious behaviour.

The masked semantic priming paradigm is often referred to as the ‘sandwich’

technique. This is due to the prime word being sandwiched between the pattern mask and the

target stimulus; this word acts as the backwards mask (Forster, n.d.). In this paradigm, the

prime word appears to appear invisible as the information regarding the prime never reaches

human consciousness; the participants have no awareness of the prime. Research in this area

by Merikle, Smilek & Eastwood (2000) found that stimulus information can be visually

perceived even when there is no awareness of perceiving it. This is supported by a study by

Kinoshita & Norris (2012)  who highlighted that this is related to the belief that an

‘unconscious’ prime will tap into automatic processes and can, therefore, be used to identify

the obligatory representations and processes that support reading. Presentation of a masked

prime word automatically causes a lexical entry to be opened, if the same word is

encountered a second time straight after the masked prime word, the lexical entry remains

opened thus, having little effect on cognitive load (Bodner & Stalinski, 2008).

The multitude of information consciously thrown at our working memory can

exceed a person’s capacity to process, thus overwhelming the brain and causing an effect on

cognitive processing.  This is explained as a cognitive load. This refers to the amount of

mental activity imposed on our semantic memory at any one time. A person’s semantic

memory is vulnerable and can overload easily by incoming information.  Though the

semantic memory can overload, Neuroscience has mapped a cognitive pathway that

demonstrates unconscious processing, underlies emotional experience and maps out the road

to unconscious processing. Even if stimuli have not been perceived consciously, the

subcortical pathway is otherwise known as the thalamus – amygdala connection may

unconsciously perceive the word and its meaning. Studies completed by Mack & Rock (1998) found that stimuli that was left unattended and was claimed by participants to not

being observed displayed measurable behavioural patterns related to perception. Thus

concluding that a stimulus can still be perceived unconsciously and influence the

affective state.

Affective state, in turn, is affected by a person’s personality traits.  A person’s

individual’s differences can have an automatic influence on a participant’s judgement on

words whether positive or negative.  A study conducted by Scott, Mogg & Bradley (2001)

highlights that participants with a higher level of depression showed enhanced masked

semantic priming of words surrounding depression as opposed to words related to happiness.

Furthermore, four studies where Rogers & Revelle (1998) examined personality, mood and

stimulus valence on cognitive functions. They discovered that personality factors influenced

judgment when the choice was between positive and negative words. They concluded that

mood highly influenced judgement and perception. Neuroticism was positively correlated

with the number of negative words chosen, and Extraverts were positively correlated with

positive words chosen. Concluding that being an anxious person or being happy, go lucky

person can highly influence someone’s cognitive process. Their research showed, however,

that their cognitive load was not affected when choosing the word. Participants choose

negative valanced words a lot quicker than positive valanced words.

Based on the reviewed literature, this present research will examine the influence of

emotional valence words on a semantic priming level. It will review the priming effect at

conscious and unconscious cognitive processing and how these processes relate to emotional

valence words. It will review how individual differences such as anxiety and happiness affect

a persons’ cognitive processing.  This research will look at three hypotheses that will support

reviews literature.  (1) It was hypothesized that the priming effect would be stronger for

negative valanced words than the priming effect for positively valanced words. (2) it was

hypothesized that reaction times would be faster when prime words in the target pair are

related than when prime words in the target pair are unrelated. (3), it was hypothesized that

participants who have higher anxiety tendencies will have a large priming effect across

emotional valence words than a participant who has higher happiness tendencies.

 

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to examine the semantic priming effect in conscious

and unconscious processing and how these processes relate to emotional valence words.

Furthermore, it reviews how individual differences such as anxiety and happiness can affect a

persons’ cognitive processing.  Results supported two out of the three hypotheses, showing

strong evidence that priming effect does occur when viewing emotional valence words.

Results show that a significant priming effect sizes occurred for both positive and negative

valance words; however, there were no results for neutral words. The largest priming effect

that occurred was for the negative words in the cognitive load task. Selection of these

negative words was automatic showing that the priming effect was not reduced under the

cognitive load. This supported our first hypotheses – It was hypothesized that the priming

effect would be stronger for negative valanced words than the priming effect for positively

valanced words.  With the events of co-occurrence within the larger text of the task, and word frequencies, the negative valence word was able to compute a lot quicker. Positive valanced

words usually have a higher number of associations than negative valanced words, therefore,

they may be more prone to elicit semantic integration (Kuhlmann, Hofmann, Briesemeister &

Jacobs, 2016).

The supported hypotheses was, as expected, that participants reaction times would be faster

when prime words in the target pair are related than when prime words in target pair are

unrelated. When faced with related prime target pairs, participants reacted a lot faster

compared to unrelated prime target pairs. When comparing tasks, reaction times were

generally faster for the cognitive load and when the words have a negative valence. As

previously mentioned, past studies have shown negative primed words were unconsciously

perceived faster than positive words, decreasing executive functioning which includes

working memory, cognitive load, attention and affective state. Meyer and Schvaneveldt

(1971) state that our long-term memory is organised semantically, in other words, there is a

structure within our long-term memory in which the location of two associated words are

closer than those of two associated words.

This statement by Meyer and Schvaneveldt is not unreasonable; they advise that the

proximity of associated words in the long-term memory structure allows for faster accessing

of information for the second decision. In other words, when the participant is shown the

second prime word of the pair and they recognise that the word is related to the first prime

word they can access the related word a lot quicker causing a quicker reaction time on the

task. If the word is familiar to the participant, the starting location to cognitively process this

word is in the familiar sector of the lexical decision making. This is generally faster; a major

shift between locations in the brain is required to access potential information about unrelated

words, whereas such a shift is not required for related words.

The unsupported hypothesis was our third hypothesis; it was hypothesized that

participants who have higher anxiety tendencies will have a large priming effect across

emotional valence words than a participant who has higher happiness tendencies. Contrary to

expectations, a negative correlation was found happiness and anxiety however this does not

show enough correlations of specific interest between priming effect and individual

differences to support current studies. This highlights the limitations of this research. A methodological problem that interfered with the ability to find a correlation between

individual differences such as anxiety and happiness and persons’ cognitive processes were

possibly how brief the surveys were, and how the two surveys only focusing on these two

emotions- anxiety and happiness. Extended the survey and adding more emotions such as

depression and apprehensive for negative valance and self-worth, and health traits for the

positive valance. The involvement of negative and positive emotions such as anxiety and

happiness have briefly been explored, but it is equally important to explore how mental

health traits such as anxiety and happiness correlate to prime words both negative and

positive and how these words provoke an emotional response for participants.  Additionally,

further research is needed to investigate the impact of emotion- evoking words on behaviour.

In conclusion, this study has highlighted some important key findings surrounding

priming effect on conscious and unconscious levels, however further research is needed to

establish whether emotional valence words affected participant’s mental health traits of

feeling anxious or happiness. It highlighted that a significant priming effect did occur when

participants viewed emotional valence words. For negative valanced words particularly, the

size of the priming effect was greater than positively valanced words. The reaction time for

negative prime words was significantly faster than positive prime words, showing that

negative words increased unconscious processing speed particularly when the targeted words

were related. Overall, regardless of results only supporting two out of the three hypotheses,

results demonstrate how powerful the connection between stimulus, attention, consciousness

and brain function and how someone’s perception of words can still influence conscious

behaviour through reaction time and valance.