Visual word recognition: On the reliability of repetition priming

Abstract

Repetition priming is one of the most robust phenomena in cognitive psychology, but participants vary substantially on the amount of priming that they produce. The current experiments assessed the reliability of repetition priming within individuals. The results suggest that observed differences in the size of the repetition priming effect across participants are largely reliable and result primarily from systematic processes. We conclude that the unreliability of semantic priming observed by Stolz, Besner, and Carr (2005) is specific to uncoordinated processes in semantic memory, and that this unreliability does not generalize to other processes in visual word recognition. We consider the implications of these results for theories of automatic and controlled processes that contribute to priming. Finally, we emphasize the importance of reliability for researchers who use similar paradigms to study individual and group differences in cognition.

Keywords:

• Repetition priming
• Statistical reliability
• Repetition proportion
• Visual word recognition

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to DB and JAS, and preliminary results were presented at the 18th annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science in London, Ontario. We thank Keith A. Hutchison and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also thank Sandra C. Gregory, Colleen Merrifield, Zhenhua Wang, Regina Thurairatnam, and Melissa Chartrand for their help with data collection.

Notes

¹Charles Folk and an anonymous reviewer brought this point to our attention.