Debriefing
In semantic priming lexical decision experiments, we are interested in the response time to the second stimulus in each stimulus pair. This second stimulus is called the target. We categorize targets based on what type of stimulus the first, or prime, stimulus was. Look at the typical results for a semantic priming experiment. The response time difference between the related prime word target condition and the unrelated prime word target condition is referred to as the priming effect. We have grouped all the non-word data together here, and note that non-words following all prime types have slower response times, and have similar response times to each other (there is no priming effect). Results from semantic priming experiments suggest that word representations are connected by meaning in the mental lexicon.