PSYC 336 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Spreading Activation

• School: University of San Diego
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 336
• Professor: Appleton-Knapp

Document Summary

Def a test in which participants are shown strings of letters and must indicate, as quickly as possible, whether or not each string of letters is a word in english. Present participants with pairs of letter strings. Yes, if both strings were words no, if not. Trials with related words will produce semantic priming. Def a process in which activation of an idea in memory causes activation to spread to other ideas related to the first in meaning. Priming indicates that a specific prior event will produce a state of readiness. Results from the fact that the two words in the pair are related in meaning. Results lexical-decision responses were faster if the stimulus words were related. Once the spreading activation has begun, people have the option of shutting down some of this spread if they"re convinced that the wrong nodes are being activated.