Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
knowledge (e.g., we can prime the concept of “kindness” by presenting people with words
related to kindness) and to the influence of that activation on behavior (people who are primed
with the concept of kindness may act more kindly).
One measure of the influence of priming on implicit memory is the word fragment test, in which
a person is asked to fill in missing letters to make words. You can try this yourself: First, try to
complete the following word fragments, but work on each one for only three or four seconds. Do
any words pop into mind quickly?
i b a _ y
h s i _ n
o k
h i s _
Now read the following sentence carefully:
“He got his materials from the shelves, checked them out, and then left the building.”
Then try again to make words out of the word fragments.
I think you might find that it is easier to complete fragments 1 and 3 as “library” and “book,”
respectively, after you read the sentence than it was before you read it. However, reading the
sentence didn’t really help you to complete fragments 2 and 4 as “physician” and “chaise.” This
difference in implicit memory probably occurred because as you read the sentence, the concept
of “library” (and perhaps “book”) was primed, even though they were never mentioned
explicitly. Once a concept is primed it influences our behaviors, for instance, on word fragment
tests.
Our everyday behaviors are influenced by priming in a wide variety of situations. Seeing an
advertisement for cigarettes may make us start smoking, seeing the flag of our home country