SCHEMATIC PRIMING OF INSTRUMENTS

by Friedrich, Jeff C.

Abstract Determining exactly what types of information we access and how that information is structured is very important to the understanding of language comprehension. Memory appears to be organized via events, such that salient participants of a specific event are able to activate the event itself (or the verb that encodes the event). I empirically tested whether salient participants in events can activate the event representation, and therefore prime other salient participants in that event in two relationships: Instrument-person and Instrument-thing. The results of the two experiments were mixed. Salient participants of events do activate other salient participants in the Instrument-thing condition, but not the Instrument-person condition.