ABSTRACT

Mediated priming involves using primes and targets that are not directly associated or semantically related but instead are related via other words. For example, based on freeassociation norms (e.g., McNamara, 1992b), mane and tiger are not associates of each other, but each is an associate of lion. The associative relation between a prime and a target can be characterized in terms of the number of associative steps that separate them: one step, or directly related (e.g., tiger-stripes); two steps (e.g., lion-stripes); three steps (e.g., mane-stripes); and so on. Models of priming can be differentiated on the basis of whether or not they predict priming through mediated relations.