The effects of ISI and prime modality in a semantic priming task

The semantic priming paradigm is a widely used method of assessing both storage and retrieval of single words in the mental lexicon. Word recognition appears to be dependent upon both automatic and strategic processes in a lexical decision task and is related to the stimuli, inter-stimulus intervals (ISI) and modality of presentation. The current study combined short (0 ms) and long (400 ms) ISIs with visual and auditory prime words in a series of lexical decision tasks. Forty typical college-aged students participated. Results revealed that prime target pairs that were related yielded fastest reaction time. However, modality of presentation also influenced reaction time: specifically, visual prime modality led to faster reaction times with short ISIs whereas the auditory modality led to faster reaction times with longer ISIs. These results indicate a preponderance of strategic processes over automatic in the auditory modality. Thus, the findings yield valuable information on automatic and strategic mechanisms in a cross-modal priming paradigm. This study is the first to yield results revealing semantic priming effects in this type of paradigm