Utility of Masked Priming Paradigm in Treatment of Anomic Aphasia: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The study was carried out with the aim of testing the utility of masked priming paradigm in persons with anomic aphasia. The study was carried in two phases, in the training phase line drawings were used, the participants were asked to observe the prime and focus on the target. Nouns were used as target; the nouns were preceded by primes which were either semantically related or unrelated to the target. Half of the target items were preceded by a masked prime (presented for 500 milliseconds) and the remaining stimulus was preceded by a conventional prime (presented for 1500 milliseconds). The outcome was measured in terms of reaction time and accuracy. The reaction time and accuracy were better for masked prime compared to conventional primes in the training phase suggesting the efficacy of the masked priming on retrieval.