Presentation
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Frequency attenuation effects in masked repetition priming: a large-scale online study
Poster A33 in Poster Session A, Tuesday, October 24, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Roberto Petrosino1, Diogo Almeida1; 1New York University Abu Dhabi
For the last 40 years, masked priming has been believed to operate at the first stages of lexical access, since it arises with words (but not pseudowords), and with no apparent frequency attenuation effects (e.g., Forster and Davis, 1984). Nonetheless, such effects have been occasionally reported (e.g., Bodner & Masson, 2001). We claim that the contradicting results reported in the literature were due to the substantial low statistical power of previous studies, which were therefore unable to reliably detect medium-to-small interaction effects. To quantify an adequate sample size to detect such effects, we ran a series of simulations taking into account the expected effect size, and the estimates of the standard deviations of the measurements (in this case, RT to related and RT to unrelated) and correlations between the two. This analysis suggested that a sample size of 2,600 subjects would ensure 97% chances to detect a medium-size interaction effect (around 15 ms). To obviate recruitment issues, we capitalized on modern technologies using a novel online stimulus delivery program (Labvanced). Before running the actual experiment, we also ran a pilot experiment with a reduced sample size (N=299) to assess and ensure reliability of the online stimulus presentation program used (Labvanced). In both the pilot and the full experiments, low- and high-frequency words were sampled from SUBTLEX-US frequency database and presented in a typical visual masked repetition priming design. In addition to the highly significant main effects of relatedness and frequency, the result of the full experiment showed a significant interaction between relatedness e frequency, with the low-frequency priming effects being twice as big as the high-frequency priming effects. These results suggest that frequency does impinge on masked priming, and suggests that the mechanisms of masked priming do not operate exclusively at first stages of lexical access. Further implications on the mechanisms of visual word processing will be discussed at venue.
Topic Areas: Morphology, Reading