Semantic Distance Effect In Information Processing Of Picture

There are three kinds of model of priming effects, spreading activation model, compound-cue theory and distributed memory model. We especially focused on spreading activation model. Spreading activation model isn' t working perfectly, although it has been supported by many experiments. It still has four defects. (1) It can' t explain the reduction of the priming effect, when distractible stimulation is put between priming stimulation and target stimulation. (2)Words having semantic relation usually have associating relation. Because of it, some one doubted that priming effect according to spreading activation model isn' t based on semantic distance or semantic relation, but associating relation. (3)Spreading activation model is the first model to explain subliminal semantic activation, but its explanation is not perfect. (4) According to spreading activation model, how much the semantic information can be activated is determined by many factors, including the intensity of the original activation, time distance from the start of activation to the present and semantic distance.Two factors (whole semantic distance and relative semantic distance) were used to examine 30 subjects during their recognition of pictures. Taking advantage of eye movement technique, the experiment explored the relation between priming effect and semantic distance. The result shows that (1) eye movements can explain semantic distance effect in terms of amount of activation, (2) significance between different semantic distances were found, (3) semantic distance effect possibly works at the latter stage of semantic judgement, (4) Spreading activation model can be applied to picture information processing.