Attentional control and asymmetric priming

Abstract

The current research examined the relation between attentional control and strategies used during a lexical decision task. Participants completed a battery of three attentional control tasks and also performed a lexical decision task with symmetrical (e.g., brother, sister) or asymmetrical associated items presented in either the forward (e.g., stork, baby) or backward direction (e.g., baby, stork). Results indicated that individuals higher in attentional control showed greater priming for forward associates, but no priming difference in attentional control for backward associates. Further, equal priming occurred for symmetrical associates regardless of attentional control. Results thus illustrated that both high and low attentional control participants used a retrospective semantic matching strategy, while participants high in attentional control used an expectancy generation strategy. Implications are discussed in terms of existing strategies of attentional control and semantic priming.