Abstract:
Experiments examining identity priming from attended and ignored novel words (words that
are used only once except when repetition is required due to experimental manipulation) in
a lexical decision task are reported. Experiment 1 tested English monolinguals whereas
Experiment 2 tested Twi (a native language of Ghana, Africa)-English bilinguals. Participants
were presented with sequential pairs of stimuli composed of a prime followed by a probe,
with each containing two items. The participants were required to name the target word in
the prime display, and to make a lexical decision to the target item in the probe display. On
attended repetition (AR) trials the probe target item was identical to the target word on the
preceding attentional display. On ignored repetition (IR) trials the probe target item was the
same as the distractor word in the preceding attentional display. The experiments produced
facilitated (positive) priming in the AR trials and delayed (negative) priming in the IR trials.
Significantly, the positive and negative priming effects also replicated across both
monolingual and bilingual groups of participants, despite the fact that the bilinguals were
responding to the task in their non-dominant language.
