Fig. 7.3 How hearingbugprimes identifyinginsect
to lexical decision forinsect. Crucially, priming is through the semantics ofbugto the semantics ofinsect, but the
judgment on the lexical decision task is through the phonology ofinsect. (We discuss the“reading interface”in section
7.5.)
However, suppose one hearsbugbut doesn't immediately encounterinsect—as surely happens in the vast majority of
situations. Fro mthe point of viewof language perception, theenhanced activation ofinsectseems to serve no purpose.
The primed item is notconnected withworkingmemory, so itdoes notshowup on the“blackboard.”In other words,
it makes sense to think of priming as essentially a long-term memory phenomenon, not engaging workingmemory at
all. (On the other hand, we candetectpriming only through its potential to affect working memory processing!)
To su mup the past two subsections, we see the i mportance of distinguishing four co mponents of lexical access.
- Activationof a lexical ite min long-ter m me mory. This can be acco mplished by a call fro mphonological
working memory to the item's phonological structure. But a lexical item can also be activated by priming:
spreading activation fro massociated ite ms within the lexicon. - Binding(or copying) of a long-term memory item to working memory—placing the ite min play on the
“blackboard”(or in traditional terminology,selectingthe ite mfor the“blackboard”). Binding entails activation;
but, as we have just seen in the case of priming, activation does not necessarily entail binding. - Integrationis the process of combining an item on the“blackboard”with a larger structure being built, for
example determining its position in a syntactic parse. In case there is more than one possible structure into
which the item