Cognitive Task Report
Lexical Decision — Semantic Priming (SPP)
Semantic priming: +56 ms at the 200 ms SOA, +23 ms at the 1200 ms SOA
Across 19 scored trials over two SOA blocks (200 and 1200 ms), Overall response speed averaged 658 ms — faster than about 52% of the SPP sample. Accuracy was 95% (30th percentile). At the 200 ms SOA related primes sped target recognition by 56 ms. At the 1200 ms SOA related primes sped target recognition by 23 ms. Positive priming means a related prime sped recognition of the target — the expected direction. Every percentile is your position within the Semantic Priming Project (Hutchison et al., 2013) per-subject lexical-decision sample (N = 512); a single short session is far noisier than that reference, so treat your own numbers as indicative.
What This Task Measures
The lexical decision task asks you to decide, as quickly as you can, whether each letter string is a real word or a non-word. Although it looks like a simple word-recognition probe, performance is gated by attentional control over lexical processing pathways: how well attention weights the relevant links between a word's spelling and its meaning, suppresses irrelevant ones, and feeds a word/non-word decision stage (Balota, Paul & Spieler, 1999). The two-block Semantic Priming Project design separates the part of priming that depends on attention from the part that does not. Associative priming (Block 1) and the short 200 ms prime interval reflect largely automatic spreading activation, which runs off quickly with little attentional involvement. The long 1200 ms interval (Block 2) leaves time for slower, strategic processing, so the long-interval priming component is the attention-dependent, controlled part of the effect (Neely, 1977).
Performance Indices
These figures describe this respondent's own within-session performance — reaction-time differences and accuracy across conditions. Where a published reference distribution exists, a percentile within that sample is shown alongside the raw value; otherwise only the raw effect is reported.
| Scored trials (practice excluded) | 19 |
| Overall accuracy | 95% (30th percentile) |
| Mean RT (correct, trimmed) | 658 ms (faster than 52%) |
| Related target — RT (200 ms SOA) | 608 ms |
| Unrelated target — RT (200 ms SOA) | 664 ms |
| Priming effect (200 ms SOA) | +56 ms (96th percentile) |
| Related target — RT (1200 ms SOA) | 635 ms |
| Unrelated target — RT (1200 ms SOA) | 658 ms |
| Priming effect (1200 ms SOA) | +23 ms (66th percentile) |
| SPP reference sample | Hutchison et al. (2013) — 512 subjects |
| Word targets — accuracy | 100% |
| Nonword targets — accuracy | 80% |
Method & Limitations
Priming is reported as a within-subject reaction-time difference (mean RT to unrelated targets minus mean RT to related targets), computed from your correct word responses between 200–3000 ms. It is not norm-referenced: there is no percentile and no T-score, because lexical-decision latencies depend heavily on the display, keyboard, and browser timing used here. The published Semantic Priming Project magnitudes are shown as a standardized reference (a unitless z value) for context only and are not directly comparable to your milliseconds. This is a research-grade index of attentional-control processes — not a diagnostic test for ADHD, dyslexia, or any other condition.
References
- Balota, D. A., Paul, S. T., & Spieler, D. H. (1999). Attentional control of lexical processing pathways during word recognition and reading. In S. Garrod & M. Pickering (Eds.), Language processing (pp. 15–57). Psychology Press.
- Neely, J. H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106(3), 226–254.
- De Jong, C. G. W., Van De Voorde, S., Roeyers, H., Raymaekers, R., Oosterlaan, J., & Sergeant, J. A. (2009). How distinctive are ADHD and RD? Results of a double dissociation study. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 19(6), 699–707.
- Hutchison, K. A., Balota, D. A., Neely, J. H., et al. (2013). The semantic priming project. Behavior Research Methods, 45, 1099–1114.