Facilitation in Recognizing Pairs of Words: Evidence of a Dependence Between Retrieval Operations

David E. Meyer, Roger W. Schvaneveldt · Journal of Experimental Psychology · 1971 · cognitive-psychology · 10.1037/h0031564 · record meyer1971-lexical
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. The extraction joins words across original line breaks ('adependence', 'affectinglexical', 'letterssimultaneously') and contains OCR slips the article did not make ('5s' for 'Ss', 'Exp, I' for 'Exp. I'); all evidence is reproduced exactly as it appears, uncorrected, per the verbatim rule. Replication status is 'untested' for the external record even though Experiment II re-obtains the association effect with a fresh group of subjects in a different task - the paper frames that as a test of generality ('to further study the generality of the effect'), not as a replication, and reports no independent replication of its claim. Only two relations are recorded: the comparison of the association effect's size with the homography effect of Rubenstein et al. (1970), and the citations to Collins & Quillian and Warren for spreading excitation, are bare or purely descriptive citations and were left out rather than inflated into relations. 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.
How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.
Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
priming 2 fields · facilitation 2 fields · statistical-significance 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 7 concept tags on this paper, 5 are grounded in a quoted sentence. 4 carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.
priming semantic priming lexical decision association dependence spreading excitation location shifting associated words unassociated words word recognition retrieval facilitation ANOVA p-value standard-error standard errors statistical-significance behavioural-experiment

Legend

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
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/10.1037/h0031564. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 2 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 5 · content_tags 7 · controls 2 · limitations 3 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 4

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 1 relation here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

This record holds no mechanisms. A layer is empty when the tagger recorded nothing in it — which is not the same as the paper having nothing to record.

facettagfieldconf.whose words
claim_typemechanism
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_typethe paper's words
phenomenonassociative priming in lexical decision
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phenomenonthe paper's words
methodbehavioural-experiment
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methodthe paper's words
limitationsThe data cannot decide between the spreading-excitation and location-shifting accounts of the dependence.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
limitations[0]0.85the tagger's words
limitationsThe authors have no way to test all candidate explanations of the association effect.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
limitations[1]0.85the tagger's words
limitationsExperiment II's reaction times cannot directly test the serial-decision model.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
limitations[2]0.85the tagger's words
controlshalf of the practice and test trials required a 'yes' response
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
eliminates: that a reaction-time difference is a response bias - subjects favouring one key because it is used more often · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[0]0.95the tagger's words
controlseach subject was randomly assigned one of the lists in one of the orders, so that every list-order combination was used exactly once
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eliminates: that the effect depends on a particular list or a particular presentation order · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[1]0.95the tagger's words
conceptslexical decision
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concepts[2]the paper's words
conceptsassociation
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also in: association
concepts[3]0.95the paper's words
conceptsdependence
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: dependence
concepts[4]0.95the paper's words
conceptsspreading excitation
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[5]0.95the paper's words
conceptslocation shifting
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[6]0.95the paper's words
sensesTHE FIRST MEASUREMENT OF THE EFFECT, WITH ITS ERROR BAR: `Quotation withheld (1, 11) = 20.6, p < .001.` Two strings shown at once, one above the other, decide whether both are words. There is no prime and no target - the design is simultaneous and symmetric, which is worth holding onto, because everything downstream assumes a sequence and an asymmetry that this experiment did not have
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[0]0.95the tagger's words
sensesAND THE PAPER DECLINES THE INFERENCE ITS OWN NAME WOULD LATER REST ON: `Quotation withheld.` The founding result of semantic priming, and its authors say in the discussion that it does not establish semantic retrieval. The word `semantic` in `semantic priming` is a claim this sentence explicitly withholds - and the withholding is not hedging, it is followed by a worked alternative in which association affects RT through the organisation of memory locations rather than through meaning
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[1]0.95the tagger's words
sensesTWO MECHANISMS, NO TEST, AND THE PAPER SAYS SO RATHER THAN PICKING: `Quotation withheld.` It then does something better than choosing - it asks what survives the choice: `Quotation withheld.` The result is stated at the level the data supports and the mechanism is left open, which is exactly what neely1977 spends 28 pages building an experiment to settle six years later
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senses[2]0.95the tagger's words
sensesAND THE LIMITATION IS STATED IN ONE FLAT SENTENCE WITH NO SOFTENING: `Quotation withheld.` No `future work will`, no `it remains to be seen`. This corpus has 539 records and I have read few limitation sentences this short - and it belongs to the paper that started the literature, which is the opposite of the order one would expect confidence to arrive in
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[3]0.85the tagger's words
claim_relationscontradicts → Schaeffer and Wallace (1969, 1970)
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[0]0.85the tagger's words
claim_relationsbuilds-on → Meyer (1971)
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[1]0.85the tagger's words
concept_edgesspreading excitation —distinct-from→ location shifting
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
strength of the relation: 0.85 · note: THE EDGE IS CARRIED BY A LIST, WHICH IS WHY IT IS 0.85 AND NOT HIGHER. The sentence that draws the contrast explicitly - 'the present data…' - writes both names hyphenated, and the concept nodes are the unhyphenated forms. So the triple is built from the sentence that lists them as alternatives instead. Distinctness is genuinely asserted there - 'regardless of whether X, Y, Z, or some other process' only makes sense if they are different processes - but it is asserted in passing, on the way to saying the effect survives the question. The stronger sentence exists; a hyphen keeps it out, exactly as a plural kept the logogen edge out of neely1977 an hour ago. Two edges lost to orthography in one evening is worth recording as a pattern rather than as two accidents. Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but the span lists spreading excitation and location shifting as alternative processes; distinct-from is loose.
concept_edges[1]0.95the tagger's words
content_tagssemantic priming: associated word pairs are recognized faster than unassociated pairs
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsthe association effect is consistent and sizeable across subjects
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsassociation
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: association
content_tags.variables[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsANOVA
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
about this quote: QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted.
also in: ANOVA
content_tags.statistics[0]0.85the tagger's words
content_tagsp-value
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
about this quote: QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted.
also in: p-value
content_tags.statistics[1]0.85the tagger's words
content_tagsstandard-error
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
about this quote: QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted.
content_tags.statistics[2]0.85the tagger's words
content_tagsstatistical-significance
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
about this quote: QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted.
content_tags.statistics[3]0.85the tagger's words

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