The facilitation of lexical decisions by a prime occurring after the target

Three experiments are reported that investigate priming effects in a lexical decision task. when the prime was presented after the target. In Experiment 1, the lexical decision target was presented for 50 msec, followed 80 msec later by the prime. No significant facilitation of responses was observed in the related prime condition. In Experiment 2, the target was presented for 30 msec, followed 35 msec later by the prime. Targets followed by related primes were responded to significantly faster than targets with unrelated primes. Experiment 3 replicated the result of Experiment 2. The data are interpreted as supporting parallel processing of the prime and target in semantic priming experiments. The theoretical implications of the "backward" priming effect are discussed.