The other group of participants was asked to identify the same words with missing letters, but without having first been primed by viewing the list of words spelled out completely. Each individual's response time in recognizing the incomplete words was then measured, to develop a comparison of response time between the primed and unprimed groups. Both groups of participants in the study were given the same incomplete words to identify, and efforts were taken to ensure that all other aspects of the experiment were kept uniform between the two groups, to ensure that unpredicted and uncontrolled variables would not have an unforeseen effect on the results of the study. In this way, any difference in the response times of the...

This hypothesis was made given the well-established phenomenon of short-term memory, which should create pathways concerning the words on the list, enabling faster retrieval of the information when presented with incomplete words. The unprimed individuals will not have these short-term memories, and must instead rely on their long-term memory alone for recognition.