Figure 1.

Experimental procedure of the masked priming paradigm. In the present design, four experimental conditions were included, i.e., subordinate- subordinate-subordinate, subordinate-basic-subordinate, subordinate-superordinate-subordinate, and control conditions. To avoid a fixed positive response tendency, priming and target stimuli were either identical or different. Participants were asked to judge whether the priming and target stimuli were identical or not by pressing “F” or “J” key on a standard QWERTY keyboard, or they could press the space bar if could not decide. The number of identical and different trials was the same. Note that the illustration depicts a subordinate masked by basic categorization. Moreover, “mosquito” was a typical representation of “insect.”