| phenomenon | masked repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical decision— “Repetition priming effects in lexical decision tasks are stronger for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words.” |
| claim-type | mechanism— “It is concluded that normal repetition effects consist of two components: a very brief lexical effect that is independent of frequency and a long-term episodic effect that is sensitive to frequency.” |
| method — evidence | — “Each trial consisted of a sequence of three stimuli; the first two were in lowercase letters, and the third was in uppercase letters.” |
| replicates | Evett and Humphreys (1981)— “The results of this experiment confirm the findings of Evett and Humphreys (1981) in demonstrating that significant repetition effects can be obtained even when the prime is heavily masked and is unavailable for conscious report.” | claim_relations[0] |
| builds-on | Oliphant (1983)— “The failure to find a clear repetition effect using nontarget primes is consistent with the findings of Oh'phant (1983), who failed to find repetition effects when the primes were presehted as part of the instructions for the experiment.” | claim_relations[1] |
| builds-on | Balota (1983)— “Precisely the same lope was successfully applied by Balota (1983) to the problem of contextual effects in episodic recognition.” | claim_relations[2] |
| sense | ONE NAME, TWO COMPONENTS - AND THE THIRD RECORD TODAY TO MAKE THAT MOVE: `It is concluded that normal repetition effects consist of two components: a very brief lexical effect that is independent of frequency and a long-term episodic effect that is sensitive to frequency.` tulving-schacter1990 splits priming into PRS and semantic memory; was2019 splits long-term semantic priming into strengthening and memory-for-operations; this splits the repetition effect into lexical and episodic. Three decades, three different pairs, and every one splits a term the field was using as if it named one thing. They are not the same distinction - each is drawn on the dimension its own experiments could separate - which is what makes the pattern worth more than any of them— “It is concluded that normal repetition effects consist of two components: a very brief lexical effect that is independent of frequency and a long-term episodic effect that is sensitive to frequency” | senses[0] |
| sense | AND MASKING IS A DISSECTION INSTRUMENT HERE, NOT A WAY OF HIDING A STIMULUS: `the masking is assumed to minimize the influence of any possible episodic trace of the prime.` Every other masked-priming record in this corpus masks to make the prime UNREPORTABLE - dehaene1998, marcel1983, Finkbeiner2011, hesselmann2016, and all the argument about whether the subject saw it. Here masking SUBTRACTS A COMPONENT so the other can be measured alone, and the evidence that it worked is that frequency attenuation disappears. A reader who knows masked priming as an awareness paradigm will misread this design— “the masking is assumed to minimize the influence of any possible episodic trace of the prime. It is further shown that long-term repetition effects” | senses[1] |
| sense | AND THE TARGET IS A CLASS OF MODEL, NAMED: `This frequency attenuation effect creates problems for frequency-ordered search models that assume a relatively stable frequency effect.` The paper is not reporting an effect and looking for an explanation - it is reporting an effect that a specific published architecture cannot produce. A result aimed at a model is falsifiable in a way a result aimed at a phenomenon is not, and it is why this paper is still cited: the model it was aimed at is Forster's own— “This frequency attenuation effect creates problems for frequency-ordered search models that assume a relatively stable frequency effect” | senses[2] |
| sense | AND THE CLAIM IS ABOUT THE TASK, NOT THE FACULTY: `frequency attenuation is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process.` Not that lexical access is episodic - that the lexical decision TASK recruits episodic memory, so a measure everyone treats as a window on the lexicon is partly a memory test. The same shape as the task-difficulty artifact and the associative-priming confound: the instrument is part of the phenomenon, and that is now four records this session saying so about four different measures— “The suggestion is made that frequency attenuation is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process” | senses[3] |
| control | two sets of materials were built so that a repeated item in one set was preceded by the same context in the other, counterbalancing across the Repetition factor — held — rules out that the repetition effect is an item effect - that repeated and unrepeated items are simply different words— “Two sets of materials were constructed, so that materials were counterbalanced across the Repetition factor, Thus, a repeated item in one.set was preceded by the same context in the second set except for the repetition.” | controls[0] |
| control | high-frequency words were included as a control against the low-frequency items — partial — rules out that the repetition-induced variance increase is a general property rather than one specific to low-frequency words— “Moreover, when high-frequency words were included as a control, half of the subjects showed, a greater repetition-induced increase in variance for lowfrequency words than they did for highfrequency words, and half showed the opposite effect.” | controls[1] |
| audit | episodic memory —causes→ frequency attenuation — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but 'The suggestion is made' that episodic memory produces frequency attenuation; hedged.— “The suggestion is made that frequency attenuation is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process” | concept_edges[0] |
| effect direction | episodic memory —causes→ frequency attenuation — increases— “The suggestion is made that frequency attenuation is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process” | concept_edges[0] |
| note | episodic memory —causes→ frequency attenuation — 'is a product of' IS THE PAPER'S OWN VERB AND THE CLAIM IS ABOUT THE TASK. Episodic memory is recruited BY THE LEXICAL DECISION PROCESS, and that recruitment produces the frequency sensitivity. Weight 0.9: it is the abstract's stated hypothesis and the masking experiments are built to test it - remove the episodic trace and the attenuation goes. The direction is testable and was tested, which is why this is 0.9 rather than the 0.7 a bare attribution would get.— “The suggestion is made that frequency attenuation is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process” | concept_edges[0] |
| weight | episodic memory —causes→ frequency attenuation — 0.9— “The suggestion is made that frequency attenuation is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process” | concept_edges[0] |
| note | episodic effect —part-of→ repetition effects — THE COMPONENT STRUCTURE, AND 'part-of' IS EXACTLY RIGHT FOR ONCE. The quote says repetition effects CONSIST OF two components and names both with their frequency signatures. The episodic half is the one masking removes. I first ran this from 'episodic trace' at weight 0.9, discounting for the fact that the quote says 'episodic EFFECT' - and the guard refused it. The right answer was a second node, not a lower weight. 'episodic trace' is what is STORED and masking removes; 'episodic effect' is what is MEASURED and frequency modulates. The paper uses both for this half and never says they are the same. A WEIGHT CANNOT EXPRESS A TERM MISMATCH; A NODE CAN.— “It is concluded that normal repetition effects consist of two components: a very brief lexical effect that is independent of frequency and a long-term episodic effect that is sensitive to frequency” | concept_edges[1] |
| weight | episodic effect —part-of→ repetition effects — 0.95— “It is concluded that normal repetition effects consist of two components: a very brief lexical effect that is independent of frequency and a long-term episodic effect that is sensitive to frequency” | concept_edges[1] |
| outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation) | control — held | controls[0] |
| outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation) | control — partial | controls[1] |
| replication | untested |
| limitation | The data cannot distinguish time-based decay of the masked effect from interference by intervening items.— “The present results do not permit a choice between these alternatives.” | limitations[0] |
| limitation | Whether context items can ever produce a standard long-term frequency-sensitive effect is left open.— “Clearly, more evidence is required to determine whether context items are capable of producing a standard, longterm, frequency-sensitive effect, but this goes beyond the scope of the present article.” | limitations[1] |
| limitation | Experiment 4's repetition effect was too weak for the frequency interaction of central interest to be interpretable.— “Unfortunately, this weakening of the effect makes it difficult to answer the question of central interest: Do lowfrequency words show the same repetition effect as high-frequency words?” | limitations[2] |
| limitation | The absence of a nontarget-priming effect may reflect low power rather than a true null.— “It would perhaps be premature to conclude from these experiments that there is no repetition effect with nontarget priming (more powerful designs might well'detect a small effect) nor would it be proper to conclude that targets are the only adequate primes.” | limitations[3] |