Event Title
Doghead: Campus specific priming at Colby College and Dartmouth College
Location
Parker-Reed, SSWAC
Start Date
1-5-2014 1:00 PM
End Date
1-5-2014 2:00 PM
Project Type
Poster
Description
Semantic memory refers to the general knowledge and associations stored in memory, rather than memory of specific events. (Balota & Coane, 2008). Associations are often studied through lexical decision tasks, in which students are presented or primed with a word, and then another target word and asked to decide whether or not the target word is a word or not. When a word is preceded by a word that is related to it, such as dog preceding cat, people are quicker to recognize cat as a word. (Neely, 1977). This phenomena is known as semantic priming. There is evidence that suggests that semantic memory is not rigid, but rather malleable and dependent on circumstance. Coane and Balota found that certain semantically associated are more active when the context surrounding the participant was related (2009). For example, people are quicker to recognize the word eggnog during Christmas time. Furthermore, there is evidence that suggests that semantic memory is flexible and adaptive to new experiences as well. After the release of the movie Snakes on a Plane, not only did the word snakes prime plane, but snake-related words such as cobra primed plane, indicating that these two previously unrelated nodes were closer in semantic space (Coane & Balota, 2011). The current research will be examining whether semantic memory can change as a result of more personal experiences, like schooling. Each college across the country has its own unique traditions, cultures, and places. In this particular study, we will use a lexical decision task to examine if personal exposure to their own home institutions idiosynchrosies will influence their semantic associations. We predict that participants will be faster to recognize target words when theyre part of a word pair commonly used on their own campus.
Sponsoring Department
Colby College. Psychology Dept.
CLAS Field of Study
Social Sciences
Event Website
http://www.colby.edu/clas
ID
854
Doghead: Campus specific priming at Colby College and Dartmouth College
Parker-Reed, SSWAC
Semantic memory refers to the general knowledge and associations stored in memory, rather than memory of specific events. (Balota & Coane, 2008). Associations are often studied through lexical decision tasks, in which students are presented or primed with a word, and then another target word and asked to decide whether or not the target word is a word or not. When a word is preceded by a word that is related to it, such as dog preceding cat, people are quicker to recognize cat as a word. (Neely, 1977). This phenomena is known as semantic priming. There is evidence that suggests that semantic memory is not rigid, but rather malleable and dependent on circumstance. Coane and Balota found that certain semantically associated are more active when the context surrounding the participant was related (2009). For example, people are quicker to recognize the word eggnog during Christmas time. Furthermore, there is evidence that suggests that semantic memory is flexible and adaptive to new experiences as well. After the release of the movie Snakes on a Plane, not only did the word snakes prime plane, but snake-related words such as cobra primed plane, indicating that these two previously unrelated nodes were closer in semantic space (Coane & Balota, 2011). The current research will be examining whether semantic memory can change as a result of more personal experiences, like schooling. Each college across the country has its own unique traditions, cultures, and places. In this particular study, we will use a lexical decision task to examine if personal exposure to their own home institutions idiosynchrosies will influence their semantic associations. We predict that participants will be faster to recognize target words when theyre part of a word pair commonly used on their own campus.
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2014/program/377