Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages

324 authors, including; Erin M. Buchanan; Guanxiong Huang; Savannah C. Lewis

doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02254-x

Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages

324 authors, including, Erin M. Buchanan^*, Guanxiong Huang, Savannah C. Lewis

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Media and Communication

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews › RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. Although previous studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations, they have suffered from small sample sizes and a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity. In this Registered Report, we measured the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across 19 languages (n = 25,163 participants analysed) by creating the largest available database of semantic priming values using an adaptive sampling procedure. We found evidence for semantic priming in terms of differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions. Model comparisons showed that the inclusion of a random intercept for language improved model fit, providing support for variability in semantic priming across languages. This study highlights the robustness and variability of semantic priming across languages and provides a rich, linguistically diverse dataset for further analysis. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 15 July 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://osf.io/u5bp6 (registration) or https://osf.io/q4fjy (preprint version 6, 31 May 2022). © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2025.

Original language	English
Number of pages	20
Journal	Nature Human Behaviour
Online published	24 Sept 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02254-x
Publication status	Online published - 24 Sept 2025

Funding

A.D.A. was supported by the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority (no. 2020023). J.L.U. was supported by ANID/CONICYT FONDECYT Iniciaci\u00F3n 11190673, Programa de Investigaci\u00F3n Asociativa en Ciencias Cognitivas (RU-158-2019), Research Center on Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad de Talca, Chile. P.K. was supported by APVV-22-0458. Y.Z. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos 72272048, 72343035, 72432003, 71902164, 71972065, 72272049 and 72102060) and the Post-Funding Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research of the Ministry of Education (grant no. 21JHQ088). S.W. was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Heisenberg Programme (funding ID: 442405852). Y.A.N., A. St\u00FCckler, F.T., M.H.C. and S. Pfattheicher supported the data collection in Danish with Interacting Minds Centre seed grant no. 26254. M. Marelli was supported by ERC Consolidator Grant 101087053 (project \u2018BraveNewWord\u2019). A. Sepehri was supported by ESSEC Business School Research Center (CERESSEC). E.M.B. was supported by funding from the Einstein Foundation Award through the PSA, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). C.H. was supported by the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO), grant no. FWO G049821N. P.A. was supported by Funda\u00E7\u00E3o para a Ci\u00EAncia e Tecnologia through the Research Center CIS-Iscte (UID/PSI/03125/2020). M. K\u00F6ster was supported by DFG grant no. 290878970-GRK 2271. M. Cavdan was supported by DFG project no. 502774891-ORA project \u2018UNTOUCH\u2019. M. A. Vadillo was supported by grant no. PID2020-118583GB-I00 from Agencia Estatal de Investigaci\u00F3n (Spain). D. Grigoryev was supported by HSE University Basic Research Program. S.C.R. and P.S. were supported by IDN Being Human Incubator. Y. Yamada was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (JP22K18263). K. Schmidt was supported by the John Templeton Foundation. R.M.R. was supported by the John Templeton Foundation (grant ID: 62631). K.K. was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (grant DOI: 10.55776/ESP286). K.B. and E.I. were supported by a grant from the National Science Centre, Poland (2019/35/B/HS6/00528). M.M.E. was supported by Leverhulme Early Career Fellow ECF-2022-761. L.R. was supported by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 1.1, Call for Tender No. 104 published on 2 February 2022 by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, funded by the European Union\u2014NextGenerationEU\u2014project title \u2018The World in Words: Moving beyond a spatiocentric view of the human mind (acronym: WoWo)\u2019, project code 2022TE3XMT, CUP (Rinaldi) F53D23004850006; and by the Italian Ministry of Health (Ricerca Corrente 2024). M. Kowal was supported by the Foundation for Polish Science START scholarship. I.R. was supported by Mediated Society (MEDIS:ON) CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008713, which is co-financed by the European Union and by APVV-23-0421. D.M.-R. was supported by a National Master\u2019s Scholarship from the Agencia Nacional de Investigaci\u00F3n y Desarrollo of Chile 3537/2023. R.J. was supported by the National Science Center (2020/37/B/HS6/00610). A.M.A. was supported by the OTKA FK 146604 research grant. M. Adamkovi\u010D was supported by PRIMUS/24/SSH/017; APVV-22-0458. M. Perea was supported by grant no. CIAICO/2021/172 from the Department of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society of the Valencian Government. J.H.-w.H. was supported by the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong (GRF no. 17608621 to Hsiao). A. Sorokowska was supported by Scientific Excellence Incubator \u2018Being Human\u2019. W.D. was supported by the FWO, project no. G049821N. K. Wolfe was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2020-035). T.V.P. was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation of the Republic of Serbia, according to the contract on the financial support of the scientific research of teaching staff at accredited higher-education institutions in 2024, contract no. 451-03-65/2024-03/200105. Z.P. was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation of the Republic of Serbia, as part of the financial support of scientific research at the University of Belgrade\u2014Faculty of Philosophy (contract no. 451-03-66/2024-03/200163). D.A.S.E.-D. was supported by Prince Sultan University through the Applied Linguistics Research Lab (RL-CH-2019/9/1). M. Comesa\u00F1a was supported by The study corresponding to European Portuguese data was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), School of Psychology, University of Minho, and was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology through the Portuguese State Budget (Ref.: UIDB/PSI/01662/2020). Z.M. and R.Z. were supported by ERDF/ESF project TECHSCALE (no. CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004587). K.F. was supported by a Marie-Curie-Fellowship (882168). F.S. was supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). S.D.D. was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant (grant no. 435-2021-1074). M. Montefinese was supported by the Investment line 1.2 \u2018Funding projects presented by young researchers\u2019 (CHILDCONTROL) from the European Union\u2014NextGenerationEU. I.S.P. was supported by a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University). C. Blaison was supported by ANR-18-IDEX-0001 and ANR-20-FRAL-0008. T.N. was supported by the University Excellence Fund of ELTE E\u00F6tv\u00F6s Lor\u00E1nd University, Budapest, Hungary, and the J\u00E1nos Bolyai scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. D. Muller was supported by Universit\u00E9 Grenoble Alpes, Institut Universitaire de France. We thank I. Castillejo for their assistance with data collection. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the paper. An introductory sentence in the paper was edited for clarity: \u201CSemantic priming is defined as the decrease in response latency (that is, reduced linguistic processing or facilitation) for target words that are semantically related to their cue words in comparison to unrelated cue words\u201D. Links to the supplementary materials were added to the for direct access to noted materials.

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@article{20fbce98db3c46c88118a74e953ee14c,

title = "Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages",

abstract = "Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. Although previous studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations, they have suffered from small sample sizes and a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity. In this Registered Report, we measured the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across 19 languages (n = 25,163 participants analysed) by creating the largest available database of semantic priming values using an adaptive sampling procedure. We found evidence for semantic priming in terms of differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions. Model comparisons showed that the inclusion of a random intercept for language improved model fit, providing support for variability in semantic priming across languages. This study highlights the robustness and variability of semantic priming across languages and provides a rich, linguistically diverse dataset for further analysis. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 15 July 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://osf.io/u5bp6 (registration) or https://osf.io/q4fjy (preprint version 6, 31 May 2022). {\textcopyright} The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2025.",

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AU - Barzykowski, Krystian

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AU - Collins, W. Matthew

AU - Vaidis, David C.

AU - Aczel, Balazs

AU - Al-Hoorie, Ali H.

AU - Ambrosini, Ettore

AU - Besson, Théo

AU - Burin, Debora I.

AU - Butt, Muhammad Mussaffa

AU - Clarke, A. J. Benjamin

AU - Daryani, Yalda

AU - El-Dakhs, Dina Abdel Salam

AU - Elsherif, Mahmoud M.

AU - Fernández-López, Maria

AU - Ferreira, Paulo Roberto dos Santos

AU - Freitag, Raquel Meister Ko

AU - Gattei, Carolina A.

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AU - Halama, Peter

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AU - Irrazabal, Natalia C.

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AU - Huang, Guanxiong

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N2 - Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. Although previous studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations, they have suffered from small sample sizes and a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity. In this Registered Report, we measured the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across 19 languages (n = 25,163 participants analysed) by creating the largest available database of semantic priming values using an adaptive sampling procedure. We found evidence for semantic priming in terms of differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions. Model comparisons showed that the inclusion of a random intercept for language improved model fit, providing support for variability in semantic priming across languages. This study highlights the robustness and variability of semantic priming across languages and provides a rich, linguistically diverse dataset for further analysis. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 15 July 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://osf.io/u5bp6 (registration) or https://osf.io/q4fjy (preprint version 6, 31 May 2022). © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2025.

AB - Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. Although previous studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations, they have suffered from small sample sizes and a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity. In this Registered Report, we measured the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across 19 languages (n = 25,163 participants analysed) by creating the largest available database of semantic priming values using an adaptive sampling procedure. We found evidence for semantic priming in terms of differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions. Model comparisons showed that the inclusion of a random intercept for language improved model fit, providing support for variability in semantic priming across languages. This study highlights the robustness and variability of semantic priming across languages and provides a rich, linguistically diverse dataset for further analysis. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 15 July 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://osf.io/u5bp6 (registration) or https://osf.io/q4fjy (preprint version 6, 31 May 2022). © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2025.

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JF - Nature Human Behaviour

ER -

Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages

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