Derived same and opposite relations produce association and mediated priming

The present study examined if derived relations under contextual control could produce association and mediated priming in lexical decision tasks. Participants’ responses to nonarbitrary stimulus relations of Sameness and Opposition were brought under contextual control. Next, participants were exposed to arbitrary matching-to-sample training in the presence of these same contextual cues, using word-like nonwords as stimuli (the participants were told these were “foreign” words). Participants were then given a series of lexical decision tasks, which included the foreign words and previously unseen “nonsense” stimuli. The task was to decide whether both stimuli were foreign words. Response times to pairs of foreign words were reliably faster when both of the stimuli were related than when they were unrelated; that is, association and mediated priming effects for related stimuli were demonstrated.