Priming words with pictures: Neural correlates of semantic associations in a cross‐modal priming task using fMRI

Kircher, Sass, Sachs, Krach · Human Brain Mapping · 2009 · neuroscience · 10.1002/hbm.20833 · record Kircher2009-priming-words-with-pictures-neural-correlate
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (html); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. The headline claim is tagged 'existence' (a common network exists for both modalities), but it rests partly on a null contrast: the direct modality comparison produced no significant clusters, and the shared network appears only in the pooled deactivation contrast - so the record could equally have carried a null-result tag, and readers should note the claim is an inference from absence of a difference in a 16-subject sample. Replication status is 'replicated' on the strength of the paper's own statement that its no-difference finding matches earlier studies; no independent replication of this specific fMRI result is claimed in the text. Note that this file uses U+2010 hyphens (cross‐modal, word‐pairs) and en dashes (picture–word); the quotes preserve those characters exactly. 2026-08-19 and 2026-08-25 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.
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Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
standard deviation 3 fields · fmri 2 fields

Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 5 concept tags on this paper, all 5 are grounded in a quoted sentence. All carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.
semantic priming cross‐modal response suppression lexical decision unimodal Presentation of a prime activates its concept, and that activation spreads automatically along associative pathways in the semantic network to related concepts, so the related target is already pre-activated when it appears. The haemodynamic decrease for related pairs arises because pre-activation lowers the demand on semantic memory retrieval and selection, so less neural work is needed than for unrelated pairs. The shared right fronto-temporal deactivation is attributed to the easier semantic processing of associatively related concepts, an ease that does not depend on which modality delivered the prime. priming effect response enhancement association Organized Unitary Conceptual Hypothesis automatic processing modality relation reaction time percentage of errors session lexical frequency word length ANOVA repeated measure ANOVA t-test paired‐sample t ‐tests standard deviation outlier trimming by standard deviations eliminating responses exceeding the mean of every condition by more than two standard deviations Monte Carlo simulation Monte‐Carlo simulation of the brain volume maximum likelihood estimation restricted maximum likelihood (ReML) multiple comparison correction / type I error rate fmri

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relation to other workclaim_relationshow this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim typeclaim_typethe shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edgeconcept_edgesan asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
conceptconceptsan idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tagcontent_tagsa finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
controlcontrolsan experiment run to eliminate a rival explanation
limitationlimitationswhat the paper says its evidence cannot support
mechanismmechanismshow the reported effect is said to come about
methodmethodhow the paper produced its evidence
phenomenonphenomenonthe effect or regularity under study
sensesensesa distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20833. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

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claim_relations 3 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 5 · content_tags 33 · controls 2 · limitations 2 · mechanisms 3 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 4

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facettagfieldconf.whose words
claim_typeexistence
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claim_typethe paper's words
phenomenoncross-modal semantic priming (picture-word)
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phenomenonthe paper's words
methodfmri
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also in: fmri
methodthe paper's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[0]the tagger's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[1]the tagger's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[2]the tagger's words
limitationsThe sample was restricted to male subjects, so gender effects on the reported lateralisation and language processing are untested here.
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limitations[0]the tagger's words
limitationsOnly artifact (man-made object) concepts were used, so the findings may not extend to natural/living concepts or to manipulable versus non-manipulable relations.
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limitations[1]the tagger's words
controlsa PRE-TEST established that the word pairs really were strongly related
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eliminates: that a null or weak priming effect is a failure of the materials rather than of the hypothesis · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[0]0.95the tagger's words
controlsfour pseudo-randomised versions of the experiment counterbalanced across subjects
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eliminates: that the conditions systematically influence one another through their order · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[1]0.95the tagger's words
conceptssemantic priming
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concepts[0]0.95the paper's words
conceptscross‐modal
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also in: cross‐modal
concepts[1]0.95the paper's words
conceptsresponse suppression
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concepts[2]0.95the paper's words
conceptslexical decision
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concepts[3]0.95the paper's words
conceptsunimodal
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also in: unimodal
concepts[4]0.95the paper's words
sensesA NULL WHERE THE DESIGN EXPECTED A DIFFERENCE: `Quotation withheld` A picture priming a word behaves like a word priming a word. Set beside Chen2018, tagged earlier tonight - which separated two cross-modal primes by their time courses - this says the modality BOUNDARY itself costs nothing, while what crosses it still can
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senses[0]0.95the tagger's words
sensesTHE SHORT SOA IS A CONTROL AND THE ALTERNATIVE IS NAMED: `In order to avoid strategic influence or expectancy which can affect priming‐specific patterns of activation ... we wanted to use fast, automatic, implicit processing, i.e., semantic priming with an short stimulus onset asynchrony.` The SOA is not a parameter, it is a fence - it makes strategy impossible rather than unlikely. Eighth record this sitting where a time course is load-bearing, and the first where it is used as a CONTROL rather than reported as a result
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senses[1]0.95the tagger's words
senses`response suppression` DEFINED BY SCOPE rather than by mechanism: it is `a special form of BOLD response deactivation, response enhancement a special form of BOLD activation in the context of semantic priming experiments in an fMRI SETTING`. The definition carries its own boundary - the same neural word means this only here - which is exactly the move this corpus exists to record
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senses[2]0.95the tagger's words
sensesA SAMPLING DECISION WITH ITS REASON, AND ITS COST: `Quotation withheld` The rationale is stated and is statistical rather than theoretical - homogeneity bought at the price of generalising to half the population. Worth a row because the trade is made explicit rather than left to be noticed by a reader
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senses[3]0.95the tagger's words
claim_relationsbuilds-on → Caramazza et al. [1990] (Organized Unitary Conceptual Hypothesis)
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claim_relations[0]the tagger's words
claim_relationscontradicts → Paivio, 1991 (multiple semantic systems)
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claim_relations[1]the tagger's words
claim_relationsreplicates → Caramazza et al., 1990; Vandenberghe et al., 1996
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claim_relations[2]the tagger's words
concept_edgescross‐modal —distinct-from→ unimodal
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differs in: WHERE IN THE BRAIN, NOT HOW MUCH - both produce a behavioural priming effect and the comparison of the two revealed NO behavioural difference, while the neural suppression sits in bilateral fronto-parietal regions for unimodal and in the right inferior frontal gyrus for cross-modal · strength of the relation: 0.85 · note: Weighted 0.85 rather than higher because the distinction is NEUROANATOMICAL ONLY - behaviourally the paper reports no difference at all, and an edge read without that qualifier would overstate the separation. The null has its own sense row. Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its span and kept, but the span reports priming for both cross-modal and unimodal pairs; distinct-from is loose.
concept_edges[0]0.95the tagger's words
content_tagsANOVA
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also in: ANOVA
content_tags.statistics[0]the tagger's words
content_tagst-test
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also in: t-test
content_tags.statistics[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsstandard deviation
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content_tags.statistics[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsoutlier trimming by standard deviations
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content_tags.statistics[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsMonte Carlo simulation
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content_tags.statistics[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsmaximum likelihood estimation
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content_tags.statistics[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsmultiple comparison correction / type I error rate
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content_tags.statistics[6]the tagger's words
content_tagsA significant behavioural priming effect was obtained in both the picture-word and the word-word conditions.
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content_tags.findings[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe size of the cross-modal priming effect was statistically indistinguishable from the unimodal one.
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content_tags.findings[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsUnimodal word-word priming produced response suppression across bilateral fronto-parietal cortex.
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content_tags.findings[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsCross-modal picture-word priming produced response suppression confined to the right inferior frontal gyrus.
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content_tags.findings[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe direct contrast between the two modalities yielded no significant modality-specific clusters.
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content_tags.findings[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe authors conclude their data support an amodal semantic system rather than multiple semantic systems.
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content_tags.findings[5]the tagger's words
content_tagspriming effect
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content_tags.definitions[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsresponse suppression
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content_tags.definitions[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsresponse enhancement
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content_tags.definitions[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsassociation
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also in: association
content_tags.definitions[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsOrganized Unitary Conceptual Hypothesis
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content_tags.definitions[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsautomatic processing
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content_tags.definitions[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsmodality
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also in: modality
content_tags.variables[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsrelation
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also in: relation
content_tags.variables[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsreaction time
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also in: reaction time
content_tags.variables[2]the tagger's words
content_tagspercentage of errors
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content_tags.variables[3]the tagger's words
content_tagssession
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also in: session
content_tags.variables[6]the tagger's words
content_tagslexical frequency
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content_tags.variables[7]the tagger's words
content_tagsword length
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also in: word length
content_tags.variables[8]the tagger's words
content_tags16 — number of participants scanned (all male)
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content_tags.quantities[0]the tagger's words
content_tags350 ms — stimulus onset asynchrony chosen to keep processing automatic rather than strategic
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content_tags.quantities[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsF (1, 15) = 14.73, P < 0.005 — main effect of relatedness on reaction time (the behavioural priming effect)
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content_tags.quantities[2]the tagger's words
content_tags638.54 ... 39.13 (53.69) — mean reaction time on cross-modal related trials and the resulting cross-modal priming effect in milliseconds
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content_tags.quantities[3]the tagger's words
content_tagst (15) = −0.45, P = 0.66 — test comparing cross-modal and unimodal priming effect sizes, showing no difference
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content_tags.quantities[4]the tagger's words
content_tags3.9% — proportion of reaction time trials removed as outliers before analysis
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content_tags.quantities[5]the tagger's words
content_tags1 (= unrelated) to 7 (= highly‐related) — rating scale used in the norming pre-test to select strongly related word pairs
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content_tags.quantities[6]the tagger's words

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