Long- and short-term negative and positive priming (original) (raw)
Related papers
The negative priming paradigm: An update and implications for selective attention
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2015
Negative Priming (NP) is an influential paradigm in cognitive psychology that was originally developed to measure attentional selection. Yet, up to the mid-1990s, a large number of experimental reports questioned whether the NP effect is based on attentional inhibition and/or episodic retrieval processes. In this review, we summarize findings since the mid-1990s and discuss new and old theoretical approaches to Negative Priming. We conclude that more than one process contributes to NP and that future research should analyze the conditions under which a particular process contributes to NP. Moreover, we argue that the paradigmalthough it does not measure a single cognitive process aloneis still a useful tool for understanding selection in cognition. In fact, it might be a virtue of the paradigm that several cognitive processes work here together as selection in nonexperimental contexts is surely a multidimensional process. From this perspective, research on NP is relevant for all research fields analyzing selection. We therefore close our review by discussing the implications of the new evidence on NP for theories of selective attention.
Selective attention: A reevaluation of the implications of negative priming
Psychological Review, 1998
The notion that inhibitory processes play a critical role in selective attention has gained wide support. Much of this support derives from studies of negative priming. The authors note that the attribution of negative priming to an inhibitory mechanism of attention draws its support from a common assumption underlying priming procedures, together with the procedure that has been used to measure negative priming. The results from a sexies of experiments demonstrate that selection between 2 competing prime items is not required to observe negative priming. This result is demonstrated across several experiments in which participants named 1 of 2 items in a second display following presentation of a single-item prime. The implications of these results for existing theories of negative priming are discussed, and a theoretical framework for interpreting negative priming and several related phenomena is forwarded.
On distractor-repetition benefits in the negative-priming paradigm
Visual Cognition, 2007
The present study investigates the effects of distractor repetitions between prime and probe displays on behaviour in the negative-priming (NP) paradigm. Investigating this condition is theoretically significant because inhibition-based accounts and episodic retrieval accounts of NP on one side and the temporaldiscrimination theory on the other side make opposite predictions with regard to the effects of distractor repetition. In particular, the former accounts predict distractor-repetition benefits while the latter theory does not. Two experiments further explored the distractor-repetition effects. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings. Experiment 2 further showed that distractor-repetition benefits are still observed when the prime-display distractor and the probe-display target are not correlated. The pattern of results is consistent both with inhibition-based and with retrieval-based accounts of NP, but the results are inconsistent with temporaldiscrimination theory.
Perception & Psychophysics, 2006
Using a novel referent size-selection task, MacDonald, Joordens, and Seergobin (1999; MacDonald & Joordens, 2000) found that negative priming persisted even when participants were encouraged to attend to distractors before selectively responding to targets. This finding suggested that negative priming is not caused by processes that operate on stimuli that are to be ignored in the traditional selective attention sense. Mackintosh, Mathews, and Holden's (2002) attempt to replicate the MacDonald et al. study resulted in the discovery of possible artifacts in the referent size-selection task, thereby making the implications with respect to the role of attention less clear. In the present study, we describe a different method for directing attention to distractors in a negative priming context, one that does not suffer from the same potential artifacts as the referent size-selection task. Our results are consistent with those found by MacDonald et al., in that negative priming persisted even when participants were explicitly encouraged to attend to distractors. Implications are discussed in the context of the related concepts of selective attention (e.g., Broadbent, 1965) versus selection for action (e.g., Allport, 1987).
Negative priming and stimulus repetition: A reply to Neill and Joordens (2002)
Negative priming is reliably obtained with repeated items, but not with novel items. Here, we review why these stimulus repetition effects raise problems for memorybased theories of negative priming. Furthermore, we provide empirical evidence casting doubt on Neill and claim that perceptual facilitation masks the effects of episodic retrieval with novel items. Finally, we discuss several theoretical and methodological issues raised in the reply by Neill and Joordens. We conclude that a more straightforward interpretation of these stimulus repetition effects is one based on activation-sensitive inhibition.
Inhibition in the Dynamics of Selective Attention: An Integrative Model for Negative Priming
2012
Abstract We introduce a computational model of the negative priming (NP) effect that includes perception, memory, attention, decision making, and action. The model is designed to provide a coherent picture across competing theories of NP. The model is formulated in terms of abstract dynamics for the activations of features, their binding into object entities, their semantic categorization as well as related memories and appropriate reactions.
Object-based perceptual grouping affects negative priming
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1998
In 5 experiments the authors examine the role of object-based grouping on negative priming. The experiments used a letter-matching task with multiple letters presented in temporally separated prime and probe displays. On mismatch trials, distractor letters in primes were repeated as targets in probes, or distractor and target letters were completely different. Negative priming was shown by slowed responses when distractors were repeated as targets relative to when the stimuli differed. This occurred both when only letters were presented (Experiments 1 and 4) and when letters were surrounded by boxes (Experiment 5). Experiments 2, 3, and 4 showed that negative priming was affected by the grouping of target and distractor letters in prime displays. Negative priming was reduced when 1 of the distractor letters was placed in the target box and 1 was left outside the box; facilitatory priming was observed when both distractor letters appeared in the target box. The data were accounted fo...
On finding negative priming from distractors
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2008
Negative priming from distractors has attracted considerable interest because it appears to reveal a fundamental mechanism of selective attention. Recently, the phenomenon has become muddled because it can be explained in far too many ways. This may partly be because the empirical foundation for the phenomenon has been handicapped by an overreliance on a simplistic comparison of a single experimental condition with control. A sounder approach requires that we collect data that can rule out alternatives to the hypothesis we might favor or test. Regardless of the paradigm used, we propose collecting data from a much fuller set of conditions than is typical. Despite the variety of underlying explanations, we show that the various theories that attribute negative priming to ignoring the distractor predict a common pattern of results across the full set of related conditions. Theories, such as inhibition of return, that do not attribute the cost in performance to ignoring the distractor do not predict this pattern.