Does a Working Memory Load Really Influence Semantic Priming? A Self-replication Attempt

Abstract

The present paper describes two attempts to replicate a recent study of ours in the semantic priming domain (Heyman, Van Rensbergen, Storms, Hutchison, & De Deyne, 2015). In that study, we observed that semantic priming for forward associates (e.g., 'panda-bear') completely evaporated when participants’ working memory was taxed, whereas backward (e.g., 'baby-stork') and symmetric associates (e.g., 'cat-dog') showed no ill-effects of a secondary task. This was the case for relatively long and short stimulus onset asynchronies (i.e., 1,200 ms and 200 ms, respectively). The results thus suggested that prospective target activation is, contrary to what some theories of semantic memory posit, not an automatic process. However, the two replication studies reported here cast serious doubt on this conclusion. A Bayesian analysis of all the available data indicated that there is at least substantial evidence for a priming effect in every condition, except for forward associates in the short SOA condition. The null hypothesis is still supported in the latter condition, though the replication studies weakened the evidence for a null effect. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords

• semantic priming
• automaticity
• working memory
• lexical decision