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Gender Priming in Picture Naming: Modality and Baseline Effects

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Abstract

Gender priming in speech production relates to the issue of whether retrieval of a noun is facilitated by preactivation of its grammatical gender. Such gender-to-lexical entry priming has been considered the mechanism underlying the gender-identity effect in word substitution errors (i.e., a substituted word tends to have the same gender as the target word.) Gender priming was explored in two primed picture-naming experiments with German participants. Primes were presented either visually or auditorily and differed in whether they carried grammatical gender information or not. Unlike inhibition from a gender-incongruent prime, facilitation from a gender-congruent prime was weak, not reliable, and dependent on the baseline and prime modality. Implications for the interpretation of the gender-identity effect are discussed.

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  1. Max-Planck-Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Jörg D. Jescheniak

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  1. Jörg D. Jescheniak
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Jescheniak, J.D. Gender Priming in Picture Naming: Modality and Baseline Effects. J Psycholinguist Res 28, 729–737 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023229329967

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