Effect of noise on priming in a lexical decision task

摘要: The study was designed to assess the impact of arousal, induced by white noise, upon priming in lexical decisions. subjects classified letter strings as words or nonwords. “Priming effect” refers fact that it takes less time classify “butter” a word after making decision about related word, like “bread,” than classifying an unrelated one, “nurse.” Two hypotheses were compared. (1) debilitation hypothesis stated noise would impair all decisions, raising classification times. (2) enhancement arousal (noise) biases sampling information toward “dominant” sources, increasing effect. Neither received support from data. Instead, follows: Targets slower their preceding primes with but there no difference without it. This interaction suggests makes difficult traverse memory one node another, regardless relatedness target prime.