Human beings use words in order to represent the external environment, their home, school, office, community, country, and the planet. They also use words to make sense of the world around them, especially when they navigate through it while travelling from Point A to Point B or in the process of solving a problem or creating a product (Rim et al., 2014). It is therefore an interesting topic of inquiry and discussion to figure out the process of deciphering words as it is made available through print, advertisements, publications, street signs, graffiti, and other forms of graphical representations of words, phrases, and statements that form part of normal human interactions and self-expressions. One of the interesting subject matter in this regard is the understanding of how semantic priming and emotion-context words play key roles in a lexical decision-making process. One can make the argument that the use of semantic priming improves the interpretation of words or lexical decision-making process while the use of words with negative emotional connotations hampers the same to a certain degree.
It is important to clarify that the lexical decision-making process is the ability of the respondents to accurately identify a particular image and associate it with a particular word. Semantic priming comes to the fore because of numerous studies that were made in the past alluding to the idea that there is more to the cognitive process of deciphering words and it goes beyond the mere interpretation of symbols such as letters, words, and related signs (Cree, McBirgan, & McRae, 2006). This phenomenon has been detected in cognitive studies linked to memory processes, selective attention, and automatic word perceptions (Ortells, Vellido, Daza, & Noguera, 2006).
In other words, researchers were able to detect how people perceive and interpret words without strictly following a linear process of reading the symbols and using their cognitive ability to interpret the words. A good example is called semantic priming (McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, & McNorgan, 2005). This phenomenon was manifested in numerous research findings wherein proponents of the said studies discovered that when people are confronted with the presentation of related words, such as, needle and thread, the processing of the target word or the lexical decision-making process associated with the said symbols and signs becomes more efficient (Heyman, Rensbergen, Storms, Hutchison, & Deyne, 2014). Thus, the priming effect was made more obvious when related words were used.
In other studies that attempted to confirm the veracity of the priming effect, unrelated words were used. For example, in a typical semantic priming example that utilizes the pairing of cat and dog, the related word was substituted with an unrelated term, for example with something that sounds like a cat but instead is spelled out as car. In this instance, researchers were able to confirm that the reaction time was much faster when compared to the lexicon-decision making process involving an unrelated word (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983). For example, in one study, the participants were asked to read aloud a certain set of words or to make a lexical decision whether a certain string of letters presented in a particular manner was able to form a certain word or a randome collection of letters (Heyman et al., 2014). The researchers discovered that response time was faster and the accuracy rate was much higher when it comes to the presentation of related words compared to unrelated words.
It is interesting to find out the relevance and validity of research findings associated with semantic priming by creating a new study based on the impact on perception and lexical decision-making process when words are presented with distinctive features. For example, the presentation of the word cow and moo creates a word pairing, so that one word provides a distinctive and related feature. On the other hand, the reverse is also considered, such that, a word is presented together with a non-distinctive feature. For example, the word dog and white. In addition to the semantic pairing, it is also interesting to find out if an emotion-context word has an effect in deciphering of words or the lexical decision-making process of the participants. For example, it is interesting to know if words related to happiness can elicit a faster response compared to words related to sadness or panic.
Based on the outcomes of previous studies one can expect a faster response time and more efficient interpretation of the words and lexical symbols in the examples that were distinguished by related words. On the other hand, one can expect a slower response time when it comes to the presentation of unrelated words. However, nothing definitive can be said of the impact of emotion-context words on response time and the efficiency of interpreting words and symbols, because the use of semantic priming has been modified to a certain extent. In previous examples that were studied through the release of research findings in studies related to semantic priming, the focus was on the use of related words. There are three possible hypothesis. First, semantic priming was triggered when related words were used. Second, semantic priming was triggered not only by the use of related words but also by the respondent’s familiarity of the word associations used. Finally, the third hypothesis is that emotion-context words had no impact on semantic priming.
References
Cree, G. S., McBirgan, C., & McRae, K. (2006). Distinctive features hold a privileged status in the computation of word meaning: Implications for theories of semantic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32(4), 643-658.
Heyman, T., Rensbergen, B., Storms, G., Hutchison, K., & Deyne, S. (2014). The influence of working memory load on semantic priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 41(3), 911-920.
McRae, K., Cree, G. S., Seidenberg, M. S., & McNorgan, C. (2005). Semantic feature production norms for a large set of living and nonliving things. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 37(1), 547–559.
Ortells, J., Vellido, C., Daza, M., & Noguera, C. (2006). Semantic priming effects with and without perceptual awareness. Psychology, 27, 225-242.
Rim, S. Amit, E., Fujita, K., Trope, Y., Halbeisen, G., & Algom, D. (2014). How words transcend and pictures immerse. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 1(1), 1-8.
Spielberger, C. D., Gorsuch, R. L., Lushene, R., Vagg, P. R., & Jacobs, G. A. (1983). Manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists press.