Semantic constraints on location operations in simple sentences

Subjects were timed in their recognition responses to single words taken from short active sentences. The pool of stimuli included items which were synonyms of words present in the sentence, or items which would make a meaningful insertion into the sentence frame. The response latencies derived from this study suggest a general ‘priming’ effect on near associates of critical words, this being constrained by the function of the sentence as a whole. Synonymous verbs were rejected relatively rapidly, but the latency to reject nouns differed for those relating to the subject of the sentence (which were slow), and those relating to the object (which were fast). These effects are discussed in terms of the varying degrees of ‘definition’ of the subject, verb and object of the sentences. 1972 The British Psychological Society