Lexical access with and without awareness.
| Number | 352 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1981 |
| Drawer | 6 |
| Entry Date | 06/15/1999 |
| Authors | Fowler, C., Wolford, G., Slade, R., & Tassinary, L. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110, 341-362 |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0352.pdf |
| Abstract | Marcel reported some startling findings regarding the processing of briefly presented, pattern-masked words. His results suggest that perceivers access the meanings of words that, due to the effects of the mask, they are unaware even of having seen. These results imply that central pattern masking does not interrupt perceptual processing of words as some theorists have supposed. Instead it may prevent awareness of perceptual products. The present series of investigations examines some potential artifacts of design or execution of Marcel’s studies and of a related study reported by Allport. Three studies (Experiments 1, 2, 4) examine the perceivers’ judgments of certain properties of masked words. Experiments 1 and 2 replicated Marcel’s early studies in target-mask intervals at which detection judgments and judgments of the physical (Experiment 3) in which no words are presented before the mask yields a similar outcome. Experiment 4 examined the relative semantic relatedness, as assessed by naive judges, of masked-target/response pairs of the sort obtained by Allport and of randomly associated words and responses. Judges did not distinguish the two kinds of work pairs. Despite the negative findings, a final pair of experiments (Experiments 5 and 6) replicated Marcel’s demonstration that masked words, no less than unmasked words, facilitate lexical decisions concerning subsequently presented semantically related words. Experiment 5 also obtained graphic and phonetic priming under mask and nomask conditions. |
| Notes |
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