Variability in the Magnitude of Priming as Function of Linguistic and Non-linguistic Stimulus

Abstract

Research in aphasia has taken a new dimension with the advent of real-time processing studies. Priming is one such outcome of real-time processing studies. The effect of priming was studied under two conditions, i.e., linguistic and non-linguistic conditions, in order to basically verify if there was any significant difference in the magnitude of priming between the two conditions in persons with anomic aphasia. Six participants with anomic aphasia ranging between ages 45 and 65 years were considered for the study. Lexical decision task (LDT) and color priming task were administered on the participants. Performance on LDT was determined by extracting the difference in the reaction times for semantically related and unrelated stimulus, whereas the performance on color priming task was determined by computing the difference in reaction times for congruent and in-congruent trails. It was seen from the results that the difference in the reaction times of semantically related and unrelated conditions on the lexical decision was not significant statistically, while the difference in the reaction times for congruent and in-congruent conditions on color priming task was significant. The results also suggested that the non-linguistic priming effect was robust as compared to linguistic priming.