Semantic Priming in Schizotypy

A semantic priming effect happens when there is an enhancement in reaction times as well as in the accuracy when a targed word has been primed with a semantically related word (Johnston, Rossell, and Gleeson, 2008). These researchers assessed direct and indirect semantic priming to see whether there are particular impairments concerning controlled and automatic processing associated with schizotypy. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was as well manipulated in this experiment. Direct and indirect priming with short and long SOA's consisting of mostly real words and also a portion of non words. Associated and unassociated word pairs were created. The accuracy as measured for the percent correct responses and reaction times to correct responses only were assessed for associated, unassociated, word and non word and the short and long SOA's. Thus there were in total four priming conditions: direct priming with short SOA, direct priming with long SOA, indirect priming with short SOA, and indirect priming with a long SOA.

The results showed that there was a positive association between cognitive disorganization and indirect priming with a short SOA. In this experiment there were only associations between indirect priming and schizotypy. Cognitive disorganization was found not to be associated with direct priming. It is hypothesized that deficits in semantic priming might have a direct relationship with delusional beliefs and accordingly this is why a part of semantic information is proccessed faulthy and other semantic information processing is not abnormal (Johnston et al., 2008).