Language and Communication Research Lab Leader Co-Publishes Landmark Registered Report in Nature Human Behaviour
Prince Sultan University proudly celebrates a significant research achievement as Prof. Dina El-Dakhs, Leader of the Language and Communication Research Lab (LCRL), has co-authored a groundbreaking study published in Nature Human Behaviour—marking PSU’s first publication in a Nature-series journal within the humanities and behavioral sciences.
The Registered Report, titled “Measuring the Semantic Priming Effect Across Many Languages” (published September 24, 2025), represents the largest cross-linguistic investigation to date of the semantic priming effect—one of the most fundamental and widely studied phenomena in psycholinguistics. The study directly addresses longstanding limitations in the field, which, for nearly 50 years, have been dominated by small samples and English-centric research.
Drawing on data from 25,163 participants across 19 languages, the research team created the largest available international database of semantic priming values. Using an adaptive sampling procedure, the study systematically examined how quickly people recognize target words after being exposed to semantically related or unrelated cues. Consistent with decades of prior work, the study found clear evidence of semantic priming: participants responded faster to related pairs (e.g., DOG–CAT) than to unrelated ones (e.g., DOG–BUS).
Crucially, the study provides robust empirical confirmation that semantic priming is a reliable, non-zero effect across all languages examined—a key hypothesis tested using an intercept-only regression model whose confidence intervals were significantly above zero.
At the same time, the analyses revealed small but meaningful cross-linguistic variability. By adding a random intercept for language, the researchers demonstrated that languages differ slightly in the magnitude of priming effects, with the model fit improving significantly when this parameter was included. These findings show that while semantic priming reflects a universal cognitive process, it is also shaped by the unique characteristics of individual languages and their cultural contexts.
Beyond its theoretical contributions, this Registered Report sets a new methodological standard for cross-linguistic psycholinguistic research. By using coordinated stimuli across languages, drawing on large corpora and computational models of semantic similarity, and openly sharing a massive multilingual dataset, the study offers an invaluable resource for future work on language, cognition, and meaning representation.
In recognition of this milestone achievement, PSU’s Research and Initiatives Center awarded Prof. Dina El-Dakhs a Certificate of Excellence for her outstanding scholarly contributions and leadership in advancing the university’s research excellence.
The full article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02254-x
