Dissociative episodic and semantic priming effects in episodic recognition and lexical decision tasks

In two experiments, after studying semantically unrelated paired-associates, subjects made either episodic recognition judgments (was this item in the study list?) or lexical (word-nonword) decisions to studied and nonstudied word and nonword targets. Studied word targets were preceded 150 or 950 ms by one of four types of primes: (1) a neutral XXX prime, (2) an episodically related word prime from the same paired-associate as the word target, (3) a semantically related word prime that had been studied with a word other than the word target, or (4) an unrelated word prime. The main results were that for episodic recognition the processing of studied word targets was facilitated by episodically related primes and inhibited by semantically related primes, whereas for lexical decisions neither effect occurred. These results suggest that subjects attempt to suppress associations (whether episodic or semantic in nature) when they are irrelevant to task performance and have implications for M. I. Posner and C. R. R. Snyder's (1975a, Attention and Performance V. New York: Academic Press) priming theory and E. Tulving's (1983, Elements of Episodic Memory. New York: Oxford) episodic-semantic memory distinction.