Event Title

Snakes vs Airport: Free Association and Priming in Novel and Semantic Associations Over Time

Location

Parker-Reed, SSWAC

Start Date

1-5-2014 1:00 PM

End Date

1-5-2014 2:00 PM

Project Type

Poster- Restricted to Campus Access

Description

Semantic Memory is the storehouse of general knowledge that individuals acquire over a lifetime of experience, including the mental lexicon (Balota & Coane, 2008). One framework for organizing semantic memory is the network model which posits that lexical nodes representing words are connected to each other based on how similar or related the words are. Measures of proximity or relatedness are often obtained through a free association task, in which participants generate words in response cues. Pairs of words that are highly related have a stronger connection and are responded to faster than unrelated pairs. Coane and Balota (2011) obtained robust priming effects for recently associated pairs, such as FACE-BOOK, which supported the integration of new association in semantic networks. Coane and Balota also collected free association data for the items in the lexical decision tasks, which provide an opportunity to examine stability or change in associative strength over time. In this study, 80 participants provided free association data in 2012-2013 for the same stimuli used in Coane and Balota (2011). The probability of generating a target when given the new associate prime declined from 13% to 8%, whereas the probability of getting a semantic associate to a cue did not change. Thus, semantic networks have both stability and dynamically change in response to episodic events. We also present data on a new priming task using stimuli that reflect recent associations (events occurring between 2008-2013) and very old associations (events from 1958-1963). Younger adults showed robust priming to both recent and old episodic associations that were equivalent to semantic associations, whereas measures of episodic recall (cued recall) dissociated between current salient events and old events.

Sponsoring Department

Colby College. Psychology Dept.

CLAS Field of Study

Social Sciences

Event Website

http://www.colby.edu/clas

ID

342

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May 1st, 1:00 PM May 1st, 2:00 PM

Snakes vs Airport: Free Association and Priming in Novel and Semantic Associations Over Time

Parker-Reed, SSWAC

Semantic Memory is the storehouse of general knowledge that individuals acquire over a lifetime of experience, including the mental lexicon (Balota & Coane, 2008). One framework for organizing semantic memory is the network model which posits that lexical nodes representing words are connected to each other based on how similar or related the words are. Measures of proximity or relatedness are often obtained through a free association task, in which participants generate words in response cues. Pairs of words that are highly related have a stronger connection and are responded to faster than unrelated pairs. Coane and Balota (2011) obtained robust priming effects for recently associated pairs, such as FACE-BOOK, which supported the integration of new association in semantic networks. Coane and Balota also collected free association data for the items in the lexical decision tasks, which provide an opportunity to examine stability or change in associative strength over time. In this study, 80 participants provided free association data in 2012-2013 for the same stimuli used in Coane and Balota (2011). The probability of generating a target when given the new associate prime declined from 13% to 8%, whereas the probability of getting a semantic associate to a cue did not change. Thus, semantic networks have both stability and dynamically change in response to episodic events. We also present data on a new priming task using stimuli that reflect recent associations (events occurring between 2008-2013) and very old associations (events from 1958-1963). Younger adults showed robust priming to both recent and old episodic associations that were equivalent to semantic associations, whereas measures of episodic recall (cued recall) dissociated between current salient events and old events.

https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2014/program/228