Relationships between priming and subsequent recognition memory

A discrepancy exists among previous studies regarding whether priming and subsequent recognition memory are positively or negatively correlated. We consider that the difference in recognition memory measures used in these studies accounts for the discrepancy. To examine this, we introduced three different recognition measures and reexamined the relationship between priming and subsequent recognition. Participants learned stimulus words in the first encoding block while performing an abstract/concrete decision task. In the second encoding block, a priming test was conducted, followed by a surprise recognition memory test. Results showed that the hit rate and hit rate (pHit)–false-alarm rate (pFA) positively correlated with priming. However, the difference between hit rates for the twice- and once-encoded stimuli, which can reflect the representations acquired at the second exposure in particular, did not significantly correlate with priming. These results suggest that priming and subsequent recognition relate positively because of the common representations acquired at the initial encoding. Furthermore, the present results are consistent with a previous study that failed to reproduce the negative correlation between priming and subsequent recognition.