Negative priming in associative learning: Evidence from a serial-habituation procedure.

Rats received exposure to two serial compounds (A-X and B-Y) comprising auditory stimuli (A and B) followed by localized visual stimuli (X and Y). A and B came to elicit responses that reflected the location of X and Y (Experiment 1). The orienting response (OR) elicited by X and Y declined during exposure to the A-X and B-Y compounds and was restored on trials when A preceded Y, and B preceded X (Experiments 2 and 3). These results, observed with use of relatively neutral stimuli, parallel those observed during Pavlovian conditioning and provide support for A. R. Wagner's ( 1981) account of associative learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics of associative learning in younger and older adults: Evidence from an episodic priming paradigm.

Two experiments investigated age differences in the encoding of associative information during a speeded naming task. In both experiments, semantically unrelated prime-target word pairs were presented 4 times, in either massed or spaced fashion, during the learning phase. An immediate or delayed test trial was presented following the fourth presentation. In Experiment 1, participants named both the primes and the targets. Younger and older adults showed similar benefits when naming targets that were part of a consistent prime-target pairing compared with targets presented with different primes at each presentation. In Experiment 2, participants named only the target word. Younger adults showed a benefit for consistently paired words, whereas older adults showed no benefit for consistently paired words. The results of the test trials showed a greater benefit for massed repeated words than for spaced repeated words at the immediate test and a reversed pattern at the delayed test. This spacing by test delay interaction was evident in response latency in Experiment 1 and in cued recall performance in Experiment 2. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition priming and associative priming of face recognition: Evidence from event-related potentials.

Face recognition can be facilitated by previous presentation both of the same face and of an associated person's face. In Experiment 1, the effects of face repetition and associative priming on event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared. Repetition decreased reaction times (RTs) and modulated both early (180–290 ms) and late ERPs beyond 310 ms. Associative priming caused a topographically equivalent late ERP modulation, although RTs and early ERPs were unaffected. The results suggest that repetition acted on an early processing locus, presumably the activation of face representations. Both repetition and associative priming affected a relatively late locus, probably the activation of person-related semantic information. In Experiment 2, face repetitions were omitted and associative priming effects were observed both in ERPs and RTs. This indicates that ERPs may reflect automatic aspects of associative priming more directly than do RTs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual lexical access is initially phonological: I. Evidence from associative priming by words, homophones, and pseudohomophones.

In 9 experiments, a target word (e.g., frog) was named following an associate ({TOAD}), or a word (e.g., {TOWED}) or nonword (e.g., {TODE}) homophonic with the associate. At brief (e.g., 50 msec) stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), the 3 primes produced equal associative priming. At a long SOA (250 msec), priming by {TOAD} was matched by {TODE} but not by {TOWED}. Equal priming at brief SOAs by the 3 primes and no priming by orthographic controls ({TOLD}, {TORD}) suggests that lexical access is initially phonological. {TOWED} priming less than {TODE} at SOA?=?250 msec suggests that phonologically activated representations whose input orthography does not match the addressed spelling (available only for words) are eventually suppressed. Phonological constraints on lexical access precede and set the stage for orthographic constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquired equivalence and distinctiveness in human discrimination learning: Evidence for associative mediation.

In the first stage of Experiments 1-3, subjects learned to associate different geometrical figures with colors or with verbal labels. Performance in Stage 2, in which the figures signaled which of 2 motor responses should be performed, was superior in subjects required to make the same response to figures that had shared the same Stage 1 associate. A third stage of testing showed that the events used as associates in Stage 1 were capable of evoking the motor response trained in Stage 2, an outcome predicted by an associative interpretation of such transfer effects. Experiment 4 provided evidence that the relevant associations can be effective in controlling motor responding even when subjects report an antagonistic relationship between the events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative priming in auditory attention.

This article reports 3 experiments that demonstrate and analyze inhibitory (negative) priming in auditory shadowing. Participants shadowed words that were individually presented over headphones, but ignored words simultaneously presented in another voice or another location. The 1st experiment demonstrated negative priming. Ignored items are shadowed on the next trial more slowly than controls with no history of being rejected in the experiment. The 2nd experiment showed that the inhibition lasts for only one item after presentation, followed by facilitation 3 and 5 items later. The 3rd experiment showed that the inhibitory priming is exactly the same when both presentations are to the same ear as when they are to different ears. Inhibition thus adheres to the item and not to the position in space. Negative priming takes place in a modality—audition—that has no peripheral means of excluding unattended material, as vision does by shifting fixation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abstract word deficits in aphasia: Evidence from semantic priming.

J.G. and D.E. are nonfluent aphasic patients who appear to have selective problems with abstract words on a variety of standard tests. Such a pattern would normally be interpreted as indicating a central semantic deficit for abstract words. The authors show that this is not the case by means of a semantic priming task that tests for implicit knowledge of the meanings of abstract and concrete words. Spoken word pairs that were either abstract or concrete synonyms (e.g., street-road or luck-chance) were presented; both Ss showed priming for the abstract and concrete pairs. The researchers followed up by asking the Ss to produce definitions to spoken abstract and concrete words; these definitions were also normal. The priming and definition data suggest that the semantic representations of abstract words in these Ss were relatively unimpaired. The researchers found that the Ss have problems only with spoken abstract words in just those tasks where normal controls also have difficulty. In contrast, they clearly have deficits in reading abstract words aloud, which may be due to problems with output phonology. Implications of these data for claims concerning hemispheric differences in the representation of abstract and concrete words are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative priming in patients with Parkinson's disease: Evidence for a role of the striatum in inhibitory attentional processes.

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and normal controls (NCs) performed a negative priming task. NCs displayed the normal pattern of negative priming in that relative to a control condition they were slower to identify a target within a stimulus array when it had been a distractor in the previous array. PD patients did not display any evidence of negative priming. In contrast, both PD patients and NCs displayed statistically the same level of spatial priming and response repetition cost. Regression analyses indicated that although symptom severity, symptom characteristics, and global cognitive functioning were not reliable predictors of negative priming or spatial priming in PD patients, greater symptom severity and poorer global cognitive functioning were associated with less response repetition cost. The possible role of the striatum in negative priming, spatial priming, and response repetition cost is discussed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic priming and repetition priming from masked words: Evidence for a center-surround attentional mechanism in perceptual recognition.

Two lexical decision experiments compared semantic and repetition priming by masked words. Experiment 1 established prime–mask stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) with presence–absence detection judgments. Primes presented at detection-threshold SOAs produced equal facilitation for repeated and semantically related targets: 26 ms and 24 ms. Experiment 2 established SOAs with semantic judgments. Primes presented at 70% of the semantic-threshold SOA to mimic the exposure conditions of Experiment 1 produced slightly greater facilitation for repeated targets but a tendency toward inhibition for semantically related targets: 38 ms and –6 ms. These results confirm the D. Dagenbach et al (see record 1990-00392-001) report that strategies induced by threshold-setting tasks can influence masked priming. In addition, Experiment 2 suggests a mechanism for retrieving weakly activated semantic codes into consciousness that relies on the center-surround principle to enhance activation of sought-for codes and to inhibit related codes stored nearby in the semantic network. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical semantic and associative priming in Alzheimer's disease.

Semantic memory impairment was investigated in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) using a threshold oral word reading task to assess priming of different lexical relationships. Healthy elderly controls showed significant priming for associatively related nouns (tempest-teapot) and also for nouns semantically related either because both designate basic-level exemplars of a common superordinate category (cousin-nephew) or because the target names the superordinate category of the prime (daughter-relative). AD patients, in contrast, showed preserved priming of lexical associates but impaired priming of certain semantic relationships. They showed no priming between words designating coordinate exemplars within a category, despite preserved priming of the superordinate category label. Findings are consistent with the view that at least part of the semantic deficit in AD is due to disruption of semantic knowledge that affects relationships among basic-level concepts, more than the relationships between these concepts and their corresponding superordinate category of membership. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition in bilinguals: Evidence from masked phonological priming.

Bilingual written language representation was investigated with the masked phonological priming paradigm. Pseudohomophonic and control primes of French target words were used to show that Dutch–French bilinguals exhibit the same pattern of phonological and orthographic priming as native French speakers, which suggests that the same processes underlie first- and second-language processing. It was also found that for bilinguals, but not monolinguals, it is possible to prime a target word of the second language with a homophonic stimulus (either word or nonword) of the first language. This interlingual phonological priming effect was of the same size as the intralingual priming effect. Implications for theories of bilingual written language representation and for the interpretation of the masked phonological priming paradigm are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological mediation in visual masked priming: Evidence from phonotactic repair.

In a series of 4 experiments, the authors show that phonological repair mechanisms, known to operate in the auditory modality, are directly translated in the visual modality. This holds with the provision that printed stimuli are presented for a very brief duration and that the effect of phonological repair is tested after a delay of some 100 ms has elapsed after that presentation. The case of phonological repair chosen to exemplify the parallelism between print and speech is the prosthesis of /e/ in utterances beginning with /s/ followed by a consonant in Spanish. Native speakers of Spanish hear a prothetic /e/ in auditorily presented pseudowords such as special (/speθjal/, derived from "especial") as well as stuto (/stuto/, derived from "astuto"). It is shown here that they also hear that same vowel /e/ when presented with the printed pseudowords "special" and "stuto." This finding of a phonological repair effect in print has implications for the issue of phonological activation from print, as well as for the prelexical locus and mandatory nature of phonological repair mechanisms in general. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Naming two-digit Arabic numerals: Evidence from masked priming studies.

The authors investigated how 2-digit Arabic numerals are named by looking at the effects of masked primes on the naming latencies. Target numerals were named faster when prime and target shared a digit at the same position (e.g., the target 28 primed by 18 and 21). In contrast, naming latencies were slower when prime and target shared 1 or 2 digits at noncorresponding places (e.g., the target 28 primed by 82, 86, or 72). Subsequent experiments showed that these priming effects were situated at the level of the verbal production of the Arabic numerals. The data point to a nonsemantically mediated route from visual input to verbal output in the naming of 2-digit Arabic numerals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative priming in word recognition: A context effect.

In 5 experiments using a priming methodology, the role of contextual factors on Ss' performance in a word-recognition task was investigated. Ss read short stories, and then their recognition of words from the stories was tested. Effects of contextual factors on Ss' performance were examined by manipulating the context of the stories' presentation and by designing the experimental materials to weaken the effects of semantic relations between primes and targets, thereby enhancing Ss' opportunity to use contextual relations between the words. The overall results of all 5 experiments indicate that context influences the priming effect of close semantic relations. They can be interpreted as supporting cue-retrieval models of priming mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encoding specific associative memory: Evidence from behavioral and neural manipulations.

Within-subjects procedures with rats assessed the associative structures acquired during conditioning trials in which the interval between the stimuli and food was either short or long (i.e., A–10 s→food and B–40 s→food). In Experiments 1 and 2, after these conditioning trials, A and B served as second-order reinforcers for 2 further stimuli (i.e., X→A and Y→B); whereas Experiment 3 used a sensory preconditioning procedure in which X→A and Y→B trials occurred before the conditioning trials, and rats were finally tested with X and Y. In each experiment, Y elicited greater responding at test than did X. This finding supports the contention that the long-lived trace of B (associated with food on B–40 s→food trials) is more similar to the memory of B that was associatively provoked by Y, than is the short-lived trace of A (associated with food on A–10 s→food trials) to the memory of A that was associatively provoked by X. These conclusions were reinforced by the effects of a neural manipulation that disrupted discrimination learning involving the short traces of stimuli but not the long traces of the same stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incubation of creative performance and specific associative priming.

In the context of an associative theory of creativity, the effect of specific associative priming upon incubation of creative performance was studied. 2 experiments were conducted. In Experiment I, using 30 Ss, it was demonstrated that performance on a remote-associate task was enhanced by specific priming. In a 2nd study, using the same method and materials, high scores (HC) and low scorers (LC) on the Remote Associate Test (a measure of creative potential) were compared in a 2 X 2 X 3 factorial design also included 2 levels of priming (some and none) and 3 time relationships (immediate, pre-24 hr. and post-24 hr.) HC Ss performed significantly better than LC Ss, and the effect of specific priming was significantly greater than no priming. The time relationship had no effect. These data lend support to an associative interpretation of the phenomenon of incubation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Configural processes in human associative learning.

The extent to which human discrimination learning is based on elemental or configural stimulus representations was examined in 7 experiments. In Experiments 1a and 1b, participants were able to learn nonlinear discrimination problems in a food-allergy task. In unique-cue theories, such learning is explained by individual stimulus elements acquiring independent connections with the outcome and also combining to form unique cues that function elementally. In Stage 1 of Experiments 2, 3, and 4a–c, Food A signaled an allergy outcome (O) (A?→?O) when presented alone but signaled no allergy (AB?→?no O) when paired with Food B. In Stage 2, Food B was paired with the allergy (B?→?0). In a test phase, the original discrimination between A and AB was found to be intact, at variance with the unique-cue theory. By contrast, in Experiments 5a, 5b, and 6, an effect of the B?→?O trials on the A–AB discrimination was observed with training procedures previously found by D. A. Williams (1995) to encourage elemental processing. Experiment 7 showed that the influence of B?→?0 trials on the A–AB discrimination was unaffected by pretreatments designed to foster an elemental processing strategy.… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative priming in a spatial localization task: Feature mismatching and distractor inhibition.

Negative priming has recently been demonstrated in tasks requiring spatial localization (S. P. Tipper et al; see record 1991-00251-001), supporting the notion that distractors are actively inhibited during selection. However, it has since been argued that this effect is caused by the appearance of mismatching identities at a single location (J. Park and N. Kanwisher; see record 1994-35939-001). The present studies show that negative priming in a spatial localization task can occur when the ignored distractor and subsequent target are identical. However, feature mismatches can also lead to negative priming. The argument is made that distractor inhibition and implicit retrieval of previously presented items together provide a better account of efficient sequential selective behavior than does either process alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical and prelexical influences on word segmentation: Evidence from priming.

The authors examined the interaction of acoustic and lexical information in lexical access and segmentation. The cross-modal lexical priming technique was used to determine which word meanings listeners access at the offsets of oronyms (e.g., tulips or two lips) presented in connected speech. In Experiment 1, participants showed priming by the meaning of tulips when presented with two lips. In Experiment 2, priming by the meaning of the 2nd word was found in such sequences (e.g., lips in two lips). Finally, Experiment 3 demonstrated that listeners do not show priming by lips when it is pronounced as part of tulips. The results of these experiments show that listeners sometimes access words other than those intended by speakers and may simultaneously access words associated with several parses of ambiguous sequences. Furthermore, the results suggest that acoustic marking of word onsets places constraints on the success of lexical access. To account for these results, the authors propose a new model of lexical access and segmentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)