Abrams Richard L
Psychology Department, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA 17013, USA.
Exp Psychol. 2008;55(3):189-94. doi: 10.1027/1618-3169.55.3.189.
In support of their argument that unconscious priming by novel words is critically influenced by target set size, Kiesel, Kunde, Pohl, and Hoffman (2006) report priming from novel words when target sets were large but not when they were small. The present experiment examined the possibility that target set size interacts with category size. (In both experiments in Kiesel et al., category size was large.) In the present experiment, with a small target set, novel-word priming did occur when categories were small (farm animals, fruits) but not when categories were large (larger or smaller than a computer monitor). This finding suggests that, contrary to the position advanced by Kiesel et al., priming when target sets are small involves a mechanism other than preactivation of perceptual features belonging to the target set.
为支持他们的论点，即新单词的无意识启动效应受到目标集大小的关键影响，基塞尔、昆德、波尔和霍夫曼（2006年）报告称，当目标集较大时会出现新单词的启动效应，而当目标集较小时则不会。本实验检验了目标集大小与类别大小相互作用的可能性。（在基塞尔等人的两个实验中，类别大小都是大的。）在本实验中，对于小目标集，当类别较小时（农场动物、水果）会出现新单词启动效应，而当类别较大时（大于或小于电脑显示器）则不会。这一发现表明，与基塞尔等人提出的观点相反，当目标集较小时的启动效应涉及的机制并非目标集所属感知特征的预激活。
