More than meets the eye: Context effects in word identification

The influence of semantic context on word identification was examined using masked target displays. Related prime words enhanced a signal detection measure of sensitivity in making lexical decisions and in determining whether a probe word matched the target word. When line drawings were used as primes, a similar benefit was obtained with the probe task. Although these results suggest that contextual information affects perceptual encoding, this conclusion is questioned on the grounds that sensitivity in these tasks may be determined by independent contributions of perceptual and contextual information. The plausibility of this view is supported by a simulation of the experiments using a connectionist model in which perceptual and semantic information make independent contributions to word identification. The model also predicts results with two other analytic methods that have been used to argue for priming effects on perceptual encoding. The identification of objects or events in the environment, including written and spoken language, benefits from the availability of conceptually relevant information provided by the context in which an object or event occurs. For example, the identification of visually presented individual letters is enhanced when they are placed in the context of a familiar word (see, e.g., McClelland & Rumelhart