Intact and long-lasting repetition priming in amnesia.

In 2 experiments, we evaluated the ability of amnesic patients to exhibit long-lasting perceptual priming after a single exposure to pictures. Ss named pictures as quickly as possible on a single occasion, and later named the same pictures mixed with new pictures. In Experiment 1, amnesic patients exhibited fully intact priming effects lasting at least 7 days. In Experiment 2, the priming effect for both groups was shown to depend on both highly specific visual information and on less visual, more conceptual information. In contrast, recognition memory was severely impaired in the patients, as assessed by both accuracy and response time. The results provide the first report of a long-lasting priming effect in amnesic patients, based on a single encounter, which occurs as strongly in the patients as in normal Ss. Together with other recent findings, the results suggest that long-lasting priming and recognition memory depend on separate brain systems.     

Kanji lexicality effect in partial repetition priming: the relationship between Kanji word and Kanji character processing.

Two experiments are described using a partial repetition priming paradigm. The prime type was whether a kanji character is used as a word by itself (word type) or not (nonword type). This property is called kanji lexicality. In Experiment 1, the effect of kanji lexicality was not confirmed, although there was a tendency in the responses for word-type primes to be slower than those for nonword-type primes. In Experiment 2, the kanji lexicality effect depended upon the target familiarity, and no facilitation was obtained for high-familiarity words with word-type primes. The results were interpreted in terms of a modified interactive-activation framework.     

Associative processes in repetition priming

Three experiments that investigated alternative accounts of repetition priming are reported. All 3 experiments used semantic comparison tasks and included trials in which each of the 2 words being compared had previously occurred on separate trials. In the re-pair match condition, the response required matched that on the 2 previous trials in which the words had occured. In there-pair mismatch condition, the response required was opposite to that on the previous trials containing the words forming the critical pair. In all 3 experiments, responses were faster and more accurate in the re-pair match condition than in the re-pair mismatch condition. Possible accounts of this effect within the frameworks of instance theory and of transfer appropriate processing are considered.     

Exploring perceptual processing of ASL and human actions: effects of inversion and repetition priming

In this paper, we compare responses of deaf signers and hearing non-signers engaged in a categorization task of signs and non-linguistic human actions. We examine the time it takes to make such categorizations under conditions of 180° stimulus inversion and as a function of repetition priming, in an effort to understand whether the processing of sign language forms draws upon special processing mechanisms or makes use of mechanisms used in recognition of non-linguistic human actions. Our data show that deaf signers were much faster in the categorization of both linguistic and non-linguistic actions, and relative to hearing non-signers, show evidence that they were more sensitive to the configural properties of signs. Our study suggests that sign expertise may lead to modifications of a general-purpose human action recognition system rather than evoking a qualitatively different mode of processing, and supports the contention that signed languages make use of perceptual systems through which humans understand or parse human actions and gestures more generally.     

Influence of stimulus repetition on negative priming.

Potential age-related differences in the influence of stimulus repetition on negative and positive priming were investigated in a same-different picture comparison task. Forty-eight young adults and 48 old adults compared a target picture of a familiar object with a standard picture of a familiar object to determine if they were the same or different, while ignoring an overlapping distractor picture presented in a different color. Negative priming effects increased in magnitude with the repetition of the experimental stimuli in a similar fashion for both young and old adults. Conversely, positive priming effects decreased in magnitude with increases in stimulus repetition for both young and old adults. These data suggest that identity-based inhibition develops in a similar fashion from young adulthood to old age. Furthermore, these data add to the growing body of studies that suggest age invariance in the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information in the environment on the basis of stimulus identity.     

Cross-modal repetition priming of heterographic homophones

In two cross-modal priming experiments in French, we investigated the effects of auditorily presented heterographic homophones (an English example is /meId/) on the subsequent visual recognition of the dominant (MADE) and subordinate (MAID) printed forms. When only pronounceable, regular nonwords were used as distractor items in the lexical decision task, both dominant and subordinate forms were facilitated by the homophone prime relative to an unrelated word prime. When pseudohomophones were added among the nonword distractors, dominant targets continued to show facilitation while subordinate targets showed an inhibitory trend. These results provide evidence for inhibition-based selection in the processing of ambiguous words in the absence of any biasing context.     

Decomposition of repetition priming processes in word translation

Translation in fluent bilinguals requires comprehension of a stimulus word and subsequent production, or retrieval and articulation, of the response word. Four repetition-priming experiments with Spanish–English bilinguals (N = 274) decomposed these processes using selective facilitation to evaluate their unique priming contributions and factorial combination to evaluate the degree of process overlap or dependence. In Experiment 1, symmetric priming between semantic classification and translation tasks indicated that bilinguals do not covertly translate words during semantic classification. In Experiments 2 and 3, semantic classification of words and word-cued picture drawing facilitated word-comprehension processes of translation, and picture naming facilitated word-production processes. These effects were independent, consistent with a sequential model and with the conclusion that neither semantic classification nor word-cued picture drawing elicits covert translation. Experiment 4 showed that 2 tasks involving word-retrieval processes--written word translation and picture naming--had subadditive effects on later translation. Incomplete transfer from written translation to spoken translation indicated that preparation for articulation also benefited from repetition in the less-fluent language.     

Decomposition of repetition priming components in picture naming

Cognitive mechanisms underlying repetition priming in picture naming were decomposed in several experiments. Sets of encoding manipulations meant to selectively prime or reduce priming in object identification or word production components of picture naming were combined factorially to dissociate processes underlying priming in picture naming. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 were conducted with Spanish-English bilingual participants and bilingual materials. Experiments 4, 5A, and 5B were single-language experiments in English or Spanish. A simple process model was used to formalize the theoretical predictions and test them across all experiments simultaneously. Object identification and word production processes were selectively influenced in an additive manner, which suggests that the 2 sets of processes are independent and sequential. The patterns of facilitation support a quantitative model of transfer-appropriate processing in which shared processes from encoding to test are the causal basis and speeded processes are the mechanism of facilitation.     

Testing instance models of face repetition priming

Two experiments examining repetition priming in face recognition are reported. They employed eight rather than the more usual two presentation trials so that the prediction made by Logan's (1988) instance model of power function speedup of response time (RT) distributions could be examined. In Experiment 1, we presented the same photograph on each trial; in Experiment 2, we presented photographs of varying poses. Both experiments showed repetition priming effects for familiar and unfamiliar faces, power function speedup for both the mean and the standard deviation of RT and the power function speedup of the quanties of the RT distributions. We argue that our findings are consistent with the predictions made by the instance model and provide an explanatory challenge for alternative theoretical approaches.     

Bias in masked word identification: unconscious influences of repetition priming

The beneficial influence of a prior study episode on subsequent identification of a word includes a large bias component, revealed in the forced-choice variant of the masked word identification test. In that type of test, subjects show a preference for a studied probe over a nonstudied probe, regardless of which one matches the masked target word. The forced-choice test was used in the present experiments to test the possibility that this bias effect is due to conscious recollection. Results show that bias was strongly attenuated (1) by changes in modality between study and test, and (2) under certain conditions, by using a conceptually driven study task. The bias effect was found only when probes were orthographically similar to one another, as predicted by the counter model (Ratcliff & McKoon, 1997). These results provide strong evidence that the bias effect is not mediated by conscious recollection.     

Masked repetition priming and proportion effects under cognitive load.

The authors used a cognitive load manipulation (rehearsing a string of digits during the trial) to test the automaticity of (a) masked repetition priming and (b) the masked repetition proportion (RP) effect (i.e., greater priming when the proportion of repetition-prime trials is higher) in the lexical decision task. The RP (.2 vs. .8) was varied across blocks. Masked priming was not reduced under load compared with a no-load group. Surprisingly, only the load group showed an RP effect in response latencies, although the no-load group showed an RP effect in the error rates. Our results show that masked priming is automatic, yet the influence of masked primes can nonetheless be adjusted at an unconscious level. Implications for accounts of masked priming are discussed.     

Increased semantic and repetition priming in schizophrenic patients

Positive and negative priming (PP and NP) in schizophrenia were studied with a lexical-decision task. Probe words, presented 800 ms after the response to the prime (containing a word and a nonword), were either identical to, semantically related to, or unrelated to the prime target word (PP) or to the prime distractor word (NP). Schizophrenic patients displayed stronger semantic and repetition PP than controls after controlling for their slower responses. Significant NP was observed in both groups for word repetition only. The PP findings contrast with results from studies with similar prime-probe intervals but without prime responses. It is proposed that schizophrenic patients, because of impaired (controlled) processes of response selection, strongly benefit from (or rely on) the automatic retrieval of processing episodes containing response information. Related findings indicating automatic response facilitation in schizophrenia are discussed.     

Modality-specific repetition priming of auditory word recognition

Subjects were pretrained on 30 experimental words by matching each to one of three definitions. The pretrained words were presented auditorily, or in their conventional spellings, or phonically misspelt (e.g., LORNE for lawn). The same words were later interleaved randomly with 70 new filler words and presented auditorily in a background of white noise. Only the auditory pretraining led to significantly improved recognition of the experimental words when compared with the recognition scores of a control group of subjects given no form of pretraining.     

Associative and repetition priming with the repeated masked prime technique: No priming found

Wentura and Frings (2005) reported evidence of subliminal categorical priming on a lexical decision task, using a new method of visual masking in which the prime string consisted of the prime word flanked by random consonants and random letter masks alternated with the prime string on successive refresh cycles. We investigated associative and repetition priming on lexical decision, using the same method of visual masking. Three experiments failed to show any evidence of associative priming, (1) when the prime string was fixed at 10 characters (three to six flanking letters) and (2) when the number of flanking letters were reduced or absent. In all cases, prime detection was at chance level. Strong associative priming was observed with visible unmasked primes, but the addition of flanking letters restricted priming even though prime detection was still high. With repetition priming, no priming effects were found with the repeated masked technique, and prime detection was poor but just above chance levels. We conclude that with repeated masked primes, there is effective visual masking but that associative priming and repetition priming do not occur with experiment-unique prime-target pairs. Explanations for this apparent discrepancy across priming paradigms are discussed. The priming stimuli and prime-target pairs used in this study may be downloaded as supplemental materials from mc.psychonomicjournals. org/content/supplemental.     

Multiple repetition priming of faces: Massed and spaced presentations

Previously viewing a face typically leads to a decrease in the amount of time taken to later identify it (“repetition priming”). Five repetition priming experiments are reported, which investigate whether multiple presentations of a face increase the amount of repetition priming. The results demonstrate similar amounts of priming from massed multiple presentations of the same face or a series of different images (freeze frames selected from a moving clip and presented in sequence), compared with a single unchanging presentation (Experiments 1 and 2). This is true even when different images are presented at prime and test (Experiment 3). However when multiple presentations were presented in a spaced fashion, with one or more intervening items between each repeat, there was significantly more priming in the multiple than single presentation condition (Experiment 4). This was true even when the face was named only once in both the multiple and single spaced conditions (Experiment 5). The results are discussed in relation to face motion.     

Task demands and representation in long-term repetition priming

The effects of task demands on the representation of letter strings in long-term repetition priming (LTRP) were explored in two lexical decision experiments. The stimuli in both experiments were words and nonwords, some presented horizontally and some vertically. The only difference between the two experiments was the response required by the participant. In Experiment 1, the participants pressed one of two buttons, indicating whether or not a given stimulus was a word. In Experiment 2, the participants pressed one of four buttons, indicating both the lexical status and the orientation of a given stimulus. The results were that in Experiment 1, LTRP was not disrupted by a change in stimulus orientation, whereas in Experiment 2 it was, suggesting that the nature of the stimulus representation utilized in LTRP is partially dependent on the demands of the task.     

Context effects in repetition priming are sense effects

This articlereports three experiments that investigate the role ofcontext in repetition priming using a lexical decision task. The experiments show that repetition priming is either eliminated or significantly reduced if a change in context also alters the perceived sense of a nonhomographic target word. If perceived sense is not altered, a change in context is inconsequential. This points to the important role played by perceived sense in repetition priming. An explanation within a sense-specific activation framework is proposed in preference to a modified processing view.     

Masked repetition and phonological priming in picture naming

We report a series of picture naming experiments in which target pictures were primed by briefly presented masked words. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the prior presentation of the same word prime (e.g.,rose-rose) facilitates picture naming independently of the target’s name frequency. In Experiment 2, primes that were homophones of picture targets (e.g.,rows-rose) also produced facilitatory effects compared with unrelated controls, but priming was significantly larger for targets with low-frequency names relative to targets with high-frequency names. In Experiment 3, primes that were higher frequency homophones of picture targets produced facilitatory effects compared with identical primes. These results are discussed in relation to different accounts of the effects of masked priming in current models of picture naming.     

A bottleneck in face identification: repetition priming from flanker images

There is evidence that face processing is capacity-limited in distractor interference tasks and in tasks requiring overt recognition memory. We examined whether capacity limits for faces can be observed with a more sensitive measure of visual processing, by measuring repetition priming of flanker faces that were presented alongside a face or a nonface target. In Experiment 1, we found identity priming for face flankers, by measuring repetition priming across a change in image, during task-relevant nonface processing, but not during the processing of a concurrently-presented face target. Experiment 2 showed perceptual priming of the flanker faces, across identical images at prime and test, when they were presented alongside a face target. In a third Experiment, all of these effects were replicated by measuring identity priming and perceptual priming within the same task. Overall, these results imply that face processing is capacity limited, such that only a single face can be identified at one time. Merely attending to a target face appears sufficient to trigger these capacity limits, thereby extinguishing identification of a second face in the display, although our results demonstrate that the additional face remains at least subject to superficial image processing.     

Best face forward: Similarity effects in repetition priming of face recognition

Two experiments examined the graded similarity effect in the repetition priming of familiar face recognition. From the model of repetition priming proposed by Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990) it was predicted that similarity effects may be a confound of stimulus preparation. Experiment 1 was used to discount this hypothesis, but failed to replicate a pattern of graded priming related to the similarity of prime and target faces. Experiment 2 attempted a more extensive investigation using two different measures of prime-target similarity. The results replicated Ellis, Young, Flude, and Hay's (1987) finding that similar primes confer more priming than dissimilar ones, but found no correlation between amount of priming and the degree of prime-target resemblance for either similarity metric used. In view of these findings the mechanism of repetition priming in familiar face recognition is discussed.