Behavioral and neural evidence for masked conceptual priming of recollection (original) (raw)

Repetition priming a b s t r a c t Previous research has found that masked repetition primes, presented immediately prior to the test item in a recognition memory test, increase the likelihood that participants think that the item was present in a previous study phase, even if it was not. This memory illusion is normally associated with a feeling of familiarity, rather than recollection (e.g., as indexed by Remember/Know judgments), and has been explained in terms of an increased fluency of processing the test item, which, in the absence of awareness of the cause of that fluency (i.e., the masked prime), is attributed instead to prior exposure in the study phase.