No go on neutrals? An interhemispheric account of semantic category priming

Abstract

In a divided-visual-field priming paradigm, participants made manual lexical decisions performing either go no-go responses, or yes-no responses, to related prime-target word pairs that were nonassociated, category members (DEER-PONY). Half of each response group received unrelated (ATTIC-PONY) baselines and half received neutral (BLANK-PONY) baselines. In the go no-go response, small but reliable priming was obtained in both target visual fields and there was a reliable slowing of response time in the right visual field/left hemisphere for participants receiving the neutral baseline. In the yes-no response, greater priming was obtained from a neutral baseline, as compared to an unrelated baseline. We show that under appropriate conditions priming for these stimuli occurs in both visual fields. We also report that cross-visual-field advantages emerged as cognitive task load increased across combinations of baseline and response variables. We conclude that task load may be as important a factor in priming asymmetries as SOA or type of semantic relationship.