The nature of semantic priming:: Effects of the degree of semantic similarity between primes and targets in Spanish

Semantic priming has been a widely used paradigm in research about semantic memory. In this study we tested the effects of the degree of semantic similarity between primes and targets (defined in terms of shared features) in semantic priming. We selected pairs of semantically related words to be used as primes and targets by using a similarity rating task and a feature generation task. Through these two tasks we obtained prime-target pairs that were more or less related in meaning (very close and close pairs). We tested these pairs in a lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and in a semantic decision task (Experiment 2). In both experiments, we obtained evidence of automatic semantic priming in both the very close and the close semantic conditions. Furthermore, in both tasks we found that priming was higher for very close than close semantic words. On the basis of these findings, we can conclude that the amount of automatic semantic priming appears to depend on the degree of semantic similarity between primes and targets.