Abstract

This chapter highlights the role that functional considerations can play in improving our understanding of priming. The chapter is organized in four parts. First, it argues that priming is best explained as a by-product of learning within perceptual systems, with particular focus on visual word priming within the orthographic system. Second, it considers an alternative approach, according to which priming and perception are embedded within a more general theory of memory — so-called instance theories of memory. Third, it outlines an initial attempt to model visual word priming as an incidental by-product of learning within the orthographic system using a standard connectionist model of word recognition. And fourth, it discusses how long-term priming techniques should be used as a tool to constrain theories of reading.