The Japanese Journal of Psychology 1991, Vol. 62; No. 4, 244-250 Lexical representation in semantic memory and phonological pruning effects Takeshi Inoue (Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606) The structure of lexical representations in semantic memory and their processes were investigated through phonological priming effects in lexical decision task. The SOA condition between prime stimuli and target stimuli was varied in three experiments. In each experiment, subjects were 16 graduate or undergraduate students, and 24 three-letter-words (phonologically related/unrelated) or plus signs (neutral) were used as prime, followed by target composed of 12 three-letter-words and 12 three-letter-nonwords. The priming effects occurred in all the experiments, particularly when prime and target shared adjacent two letters. The effects at SOA 400 ms were not stable enough. At SOA 700 ms, only facilitation effects were obtained, but at SOA 1000ms, the effects of both facilitation and inhibition were obtained. These results suggested that in lexical representations phonologically similar words were closely related to each other in their structure, and that especially the phonological similarity between the sets of adjacent two letters was important regarding three-letter-words. The results also suggested that it might take longer time to spread activation in lexical representation than in conceptual representation. Key words: priming effects, lexical representation, spreading activation, phonological similarity, se mantic memory, lexical decision task.
ing of pictures and words: A lexical activation account. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learn ing, Memory, and Cognition, 15, 1033-1046. McNamara, T. P., & Healy, A. F. 1988 Semantic, phonological, and mediated priming in reading and lexical decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychol ogy: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 398-409. Meyer, D. E., Schvaneveldt, R. W., & Ruddy, M. G. 1974 Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word-recognition. Memory and Cognition, Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. 1975 A spreading. activation theory of semantic processing. Psycho logical Review, 82, 407-428. Hillinger, M. L. 1980 Priming effects with phone mically similar words: The encoding-bias hypothe sis rccnnsidered Mernnrv and Cnvnitinn, 8. 115-123. Lupker, S. J., & Williams, E. A. 1989 Rhyme prim 2, 309-321. Neely, J. H. 1977 Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spread ing activation and limited-capacity attention. Jour nal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106, 226-254. Posner, M. I., & Snyder, C.R.R. 1975a Attention and cognitive control. In R. L. Solso (Ed.), Informa tion processing and cognition: The Loyola symposium. Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 55-85. Posner, M. I., & Snyder, C.R.R. 1975b Facilitation and inhibition in the processing of signals. In P.M.A. Rabbitt & S. Dornic (Eds.), Attention and performance. Vol. 5. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 669-682. Tulving, E. 1972 Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving, & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organiza tion of memory. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 381-403. (Tuiving, E. 1983 Elements of episodic memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.)