Abstract
We found affective priming in the naming task (i.e., faster naming of a target picture that follows a valence-congruent prime picture compared to an incongruent prime) significantly reduced if prime stimuli were strongly bound to a naming response compared to when primes did not elicit a naming response. This result indicates that affective priming in the naming task originates from encoding facilitation processes, which are usually overshadowed by response conflict due to primes that also trigger a naming response.
Acknowledgements
We thank Gabriele Schmitt for her help with data collection.
Notes
1In fact, in one experiment, Spruyt and colleagues (2002, Experiment 3) found a 4 ms effect (p<.05, one-tailed) if pictures were preceded by word primes. We will return to this issue in the discussion.
2Of course, this does not explain the failures to find affective priming in nearly exact replications (Klauer & Musch, Citation2001; Spruyt et al., Citation2004b), which might have different causes (e.g., no semantic encoding of targets; see above).