Feature mismatch effects in auditory negative priming: interference as dependent on salient aspects of prior episodes

A handful of studies have revealed that withholding a response to a sound causes impaired responding to that sound when subsequently presented (Buchner & Steffens, 2001; Mondor, Leboe, & Leboe, 2005). In the present study, we investigated whether a switch in the location of a repeated sound might represent an additional source of this auditory negative priming effect. In all three of our experiments, participants performed a series of trials in which they withheld a response to a dichotic pair of prime sounds presented to each ear. A dichotic pair of probe sounds was then presented to each ear, and the participants were required to categorize one of them. Across these experiments, the participants were slower to categorize only repeated sounds that were presented in opposite locations.     

Auditory spatial negative priming: What is remembered of irrelevant sounds and their locations?

The categorization and identification of previously ignored visual or auditory stimuli is typically slowed down—a phenomenon that has been called the negative priming effect and can be explained by the episodic retrieval of response-inadequate prime information and/or an inhibitory model. A similar after-effect has been found in visuospatial tasks: participants are slowed down in localizing a visual stimulus that appears at a previously ignored location. In the auditory modality, however, such an after-effect of ignoring a sound at a specific location has never been reported. Instead, participants are impaired in their localization performance when the sound at the previously ignored location changes identity, a finding which is compatible with the so-called feature-mismatch hypothesis. Here, we describe the properties of auditory spatial in contrast to visuospatial negative priming and report two experiments that specify the nature of this auditory after-effect. Experiment 1 shows that the detection of identity-location mismatches is a genuinely auditory phenomenon that can be replicated even when the sound sources are invisible. Experiment 2 reveals that the detection of sound-identity mismatches in the probe depends on the processing demands in the prime. This finding implies that the localization of irrelevant sound sources is not the inevitable consequence of processing the auditory prime scenario but depends on the difficulty of the target search process among distractor sounds.     

Feature mismatch effects in auditory negative

A handful of studies have revealed that withholding a response to a sound causes impaired responding to that sound when subsequently presented (Buchner & Steffens, 2001; Mondor, Leboe, & Leboe, 2005). In the present study, we investigated whether a switch in the location of a repeated sound might represent an additional source of this auditory negative priming effect. In all three of our experiments, participants performed a series of trials in which they withheld a response to a dichotic pair of prime sounds presented to each ear. A dichotic pair ofprobe sounds was then presented to each ear, and the participants were required to categorize one of them. Across these experiments, the participants were slower to categorize only repeated sounds that were presented in opposite locations.     

Target localization among concurrent sound sources: No evidence for the inhibition of previous distractor responses

The visuospatial negative priming effect—that is, the slowed-down responding to a previously ignored location—is partly due to response inhibition associated with the previously ignored location (Buckolz, Goldfarb, & Khan, Perception & Psychophysics 66:837-845 2004). We tested whether response inhibition underlies spatial negative priming in the auditory modality as well. Eighty participants localized a target sound while ignoring a simultaneous distractor sound at another location. Eight possible sound locations were arranged in a semicircle around the participant. Pairs of adjacent locations were associated with the same response. On ignored repetition trials, the probe target sound was played from the same location as the previously ignored prime sound. On response control trials, prime distractor and probe target were played from different locations but were associated with the same response. On control trials, prime distractor and probe target shared neither location nor response. A response inhibition account predicts slowed-down responding when the response associated with the prime distractor has to be executed in the probe. There was no evidence of response inhibition in audition. Instead, the negative priming effect depended on whether the sound at the repeatedly occupied location changed identity between prime and probe. The latter result replicates earlier findings and supports the feature mismatching hypothesis, while the former is compatible with the assumption that response inhibition is irrelevant in auditory spatial attention.     

Integrating the irrelevant sound

A distractor can be integrated with a target response and the subsequent repetition of the distractor can facilitate or hamper responding depending on whether the same or a different response is required, a phenomenon labeled distractor-response binding. In two experiments we used a priming paradigm with an identification task to investigate influences of stimulus grouping on the binding of irrelevant stimuli (distractors) and responses in audition. In a grouped condition participants heard relevant and irrelevant sounds in one central location, whereas in a non-grouped condition the relevant sound was presented to one ear and the irrelevant sound was presented to the other ear. Distractor-based retrieval of the prime response was stronger for the grouped compared to the non-grouped presentation of stimuli indicating that binding of irrelevant auditory stimuli with responses is modulated by perceptual grouping.     

Spatial and identity negative priming in audition: Evidence of feature binding in auditory spatial memory

Two experiments are reported with identical auditory stimulation in three-dimensional space but with different instructions. Participants localized a cued sound (Experiment 1) or identified a sound at a cued location (Experiment 2). A distractor sound at another location had to be ignored. The prime distractor and the probe target sound were manipulated with respect to sound identity (repeated vs. changed) and location (repeated vs. changed). The localization task revealed a symmetric pattern of partial repetition costs: Participants were impaired on trials with identity-location mismatches between the prime distractor and probe target-that is, when either the sound was repeated but not the location or vice versa. The identification task revealed an asymmetric pattern of partial repetition costs: Responding was slowed down when the prime distractor sound was repeated as the probe target, but at another location; identity changes at the same location were not impaired. Additionally, there was evidence of retrieval of incompatible prime responses in the identification task. It is concluded that feature binding of auditory prime distractor information takes place regardless of whether the task is to identify or locate a sound. Instructions determine the kind of identity-location mismatch that is detected. Identity information predominates over location information in auditory memory.     

Auditory negative priming in speeded reactions and temporal order judgements

Two experiments are reported that demonstrate negative priming for auditory stimuli. Reaction times and temporal order judgements were used as the dependent measures in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. In Experiment 1, participants classified tones presented to one ear as wind or string instruments while ignoring tones presented to the other ear. The task was identical for both the prime and the subsequent probe presentations. Probe reactions were slower for previously ignored tones than for tones that had not occurred during the prime presentation. Probe reactions to previously attended tones were faster than reactions to nonrepeated tones. In Experiment 2, the probe reactions were replaced by temporal order judgements. The probability of accepting a tone as antecedent was lower for previously ignored primes than for new tones. No difference was observed between previously attended and new tones. The results are compatible with the conclusion that distractor inhibition is a necessary component of the processes that bring about observable negative priming phenomena.     

Locus of single-prime negative priming: The role of perceptual form

Single-prime negative priming refers to the phenomenon in which after a single prime word is briefly presented, repeating it as the probe target results in a delay in responding to the target. The present study investigated the locus of this negative priming effect. Experiment 1 showed that repeating the identity of the prime produced a negative priming effect but merely repeating the response of the prime did not. Experiment 2 showed that the negative priming effect transformed into positive priming when the probe distractor was absent. Experiments 3 and 4 further revealed that single-prime negative priming was observed when the perceptual form was repeated. Taken together, these results suggest that single-prime negative priming involves a perceptual locus.     

Taking a bright view of negative priming in the light of dim stimuli: further evidence for memory confusion during episodic retrieval.

A same-different letter-matching task was used to examine the effects of stimulus intensity on negative priming, which is poorer performance when target letters have been presented as distractor letters on the immediately preceding trial. In Experiment 1, stimulus intensity was manipulated between-participants, whereas in Experiment 2, it varied randomly from trial-to-trial within-participants. In Experiment 1, negative priming was equivalent for both stimulus intensities. In Experiment 2, negative priming effects were larger for repeated intensity stimuli than for nonrepeated intensity stimuli, when stimulus intensity was dim. Furthermore, for repeated intensity stimuli, negative priming effects were enhanced when the overt response required to the stimulus was repeated from prime to probe trial. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that negative priming may be due to memory confusion, rather than to inhibition of the distractor stimuli.     

Contextual modulation of prime response retrieval processes: Evidence from auditory negative priming

Contextual similarity between learning and test phase has been shown to be beneficial for memory retrieval. Negative priming is known to be caused by multiple processes; one of which is episodic retrieval. Therefore, the contextual similarity of prime and probe presentations should influence the size of the negative priming effect. This has been shown for the visual modality. In Experiment 1, an auditory four-alternative forced choice reaction time task was used to test the influence of prime-probe contextual similarity on negative priming and the processes underlying the modulation by context. The negative priming effect was larger when the auditory context was repeated than when it was changed from prime to probe. The modulation by context was exclusively caused by an increase in prime response retrieval errors in ignored repetition trials with context repetition, whereas repeating only the context but not the prime distractor did not lead to an increase in prime response retrieval. This exact pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2. The findings suggest that contextual information is integrated with prime distractor and response information. Retrieval of the previous episode, including prime distractor, prime response, and context (event file), can be triggered when the former prime distractor is repeated, whereas a context cue alone does not retrieve the event file. This suggests an event file structure that is more complicated than its usually assumed binary structure.     

启动刺激含有多个靶子条件下的负启动效应

采用数字命名任务,在通常的负启动范式基础上增加启动刺激靶子数目．进行了两个实验。实验一发现,当启动刺激靶子个数为1个和2个时。出现负启动效应;当启动刺激靶子个数为3个和4个时。则不出现负启动效应。这提示靶子所获注意资源数量的作用。实验二发现．当启动刺激有2个和3个靶子时．如果未被选择来反应的靶子成为探测刺激的靶子,其反应时与控制组无显著差异。即不出现负启动。这表明在启动刺激中未被选择来反应的靶子与干扰项所受到的加工是有差别的。     

整体-局部范式下的负启动效应

在通常的负启动范式基础上 ,以小数字构成的大数字 ,即以同时具有整体特征和局部特征的复合数字为实验材料 ,采用数字命名任务 ,将刺激画面中复合数字的数目和注意指向作为变量进行实验。大学生充任被试。结果发现 ,在单个复合数字条件下对同一客体的非注意指向的特征进行忽略重复 ,注意整体时出现负启动 ,而注意局部时不出现负启动 ;在两个复合数字条件下对启动刺激中充当干扰项的复合数字进行忽略重复 ,则注意整体与注意局部都出现了负启动。该研究表明 ,在不同注意指向时 ,整体 -局部范式下的负启动效应具有知觉组织的层次性 ,并显示出客体内选择和客体间选择对负启动的不同影响。     

Negative priming with numbers: No evidence for a semantic locus

Selective attention has been studied extensively using the negative priming (NP) paradigm. An important issue regards the representational level at which NP occurs. We investigated this issue by using numbers as stimuli. Because numbers have a well-defined semantic organization, which can be clearly measured by means of the distance effect, they are very suitable for testing the assumption that NP is situated at a central semantic level. Four experiments are presented in which the numerical distance between prime distractor and probe target was manipulated. The task was magnitude comparison. Target and distractor were defined on the basis of colour. In Experiment 1, all numbers were presented in Arabic format; NP was observed only with identical prime distractor and probe target, and no distance-related NP was observed. This could not be explained by a decay of inhibition since in Experiment 2 similar results were obtained with a shortened response-to-stimulus interval. Experiment 3 showed that these observations also hold for numbers presented verbally. Nevertheless, a cross-notational experiment with Arabic prime and verbal probe (Experiment 4) revealed no NP whatsoever and excluded the possibility that the absence of distance-related negative priming was the result of a fine-tuned inhibitory mechanism operating at the semantic level. The results are considered in the light of current theories of negative priming.     

Excitatory and inhibitory priming by attended and ignored non-recycled words with monolinguals and bilinguals

Experiments examining identity priming from attended and ignored novel words (words that are used only once except when repetition is required due to experimental manipulation) in a lexical decision task are reported. Experiment 1 tested English monolinguals whereas Experiment 2 tested Twi (a native language of Ghana, Africa)-English bilinguals. Participants were presented with sequential pairs of stimuli composed of a prime followed by a probe, with each containing two items. The participants were required to name the target word in the prime display, and to make a lexical decision to the target item in the probe display. On attended repetition (AR) trials the probe target item was identical to the target word on the preceding attentional display. On ignored repetition (IR) trials the probe target item was the same as the distractor word in the preceding attentional display. The experiments produced facilitated (positive) priming in the AR trials and delayed (negative) priming in the IR trials. Significantly, the positive and negative priming effects also replicated across both monolingual and bilingual groups of participants, despite the fact that the bilinguals were responding to the task in their non-dominant language.     

Attending to the distractor and old/new discriminations in negative priming

When participants ignore an irrelevant distractor they typically show impaired responding to that item if it becomes the relevant stimulus on a subsequent trial. In Experiment 1 (N = 64), a masked white colour name was presented briefly before a Stroop display. Negative priming in colour naming occurred when the colour of the lettering for the Stroop stimulus matched the colour name displayed in the first display, consistent with the proposal of temporal discrimination theory that negative priming arises because a recurrence of an unattended stimulus cannot readily be classified as old or new. Experiment 2 (N = 32) replicated negative priming in the interleaved-word display where participants had to name the red word from a pair of red and green words. In Experiment 3 (N = 32) and Experiment 4 (N = 28) the participants were required to attend to but not respond to the words in the prime display and name one of two interleaved words in the probe display. Negative priming was observed in this arrangement, consistent with the episodic retrieval theory of negative priming. The temporal discrimination model may need to be extended to situations in which the attended stimuli have different responses attached to them.     

The Effects of Cueing Target Location and Response Mode on Interference and Negative Priming Using a Visual Selection Paradigm

Two experiments are reported that examine the effects of cueing the location of a target in the prime display on interference and subsequent negative priming. The prime and probe displays comprised two words, a target and a distractor. In the prime display, the two words were either the same (response compatible) or different (response incompatible). The target in the probe display was unrelated to the prime distractor (control), the same word as the distractor (ignored repetition), or semantically related to the distractor (ignored semantic repetition). In Experiment 1, cueing the location of the prime target significantly reduced the interference effect but not the subsequent identity negative priming (NP) effect. In contrast, not cueing the prime target resulted in the elimination of the identity NP. There was no evidence of semantic NP in this experiment. In Experiment 2, where a categorization response was required, significant interference was obtained in the prime display that was not influenced by cueing the location of the target. Although there was significant semantic NP, identity NP failed to reach significance. The two experiments were analysed together, and findings are discussed in relation to current models of negative priming.     

Evidence for episodic retrieval of inadequate prime responses in auditory negative priming

Four experiments are reported in which the mechanisms underlying auditory negative priming were investigated. In Experiments 1A and 1B, preprime-prime intervals and prime-probe intervals were manipulated. The ratio between the 2 intervals determined the size of the negative priming effect. Results are compatible with the episodic retrieval account, according to which the retrieval of inappropriate response information associated with the previous distractor slows down responding when that stimulus becomes the target. Experiment 2 tested a variant of this account, according to which the retrieval of the prime response rather than the retrieval of nonresponse information interferes with responding. Consistent with this variant, participants erroneously responded with the prime response more frequently in the ignored repetition condition than in the control condition. Experiment 3 replicated this finding and generalized it to the visual modality. The authors conclude that the retrieval of the inappropriate prime response is a determinant of the negative priming phenomenon.     

Evidence of vocal and manual event files in auditory negative priming

Negative priming with auditory as well as with visual stimuli has been shown to involve the retrieval of prime response information as evidenced by an increase of prime response errors to the probes of ignored repetition trials compared to control trials. We investigated whether prime response retrieval processes were also present for response modalities other than manual responding. In an auditory four alternative forced choice task participants either vocally or manually identified a target sound while ignoring a distractor sound. Negative priming was of equal size in both response modalities. What is more, for both response modalities, there was evidence of increased prime response errors in ignored repetition trials compared to control trials. The findings suggest that retrieval of event files of the prime episode including prime response information is a general mechanism underlying the negative priming phenomenon irrespective of stimulus or response modality.     

Dissociative prime-probe contextual similarity effects on negative priming and repetition priming: a challenge to episodic retrieval as a unified account of negative priming

This study examined the dependence of repetition priming (RP) and negative priming (NP) as a function of prime-probe contextual similarity in a paradigm in which participants were required to respond to a letter flanked by incompatible distractor letters (e.g., ABA). Experiment 1 used prime and probe displays containing a pair of "+" symbols that were presented horizontally or vertically. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated whether the letter triplets contained the "!" symbol. In all experiments, regardless of whether the RP trials were intermixed with the NP trials (Experiment 2) or not (Experiment 3), RP was stronger in the prime-probe similar conditions than in the prime-probe dissimilar conditions, but NP was independent of prime-probe contextual similarity. These findings suggest that NP is not necessarily stronger in conditions in which episodic retrieval of the prime is more likely.     

The crucial roles of stimulus matching and stimulus identity in negative priming

Negative priming refers to the situation in which an ignored item on an initial prime trial suffers slowed responding when it becomes the target item on a subsequent probe trial. In this experiment (and a replication), we demonstrate two ways in which stimulus consistency (matching) governs negative priming. First, negative priming for identical words occurred only when the prime distractor changed color when it became the probe target (i.e., constant cue to read the red word); negative priming disappeared when the prime distractor retained its color as the probe target (i.e., cue switches from read the red prime word to read the white probe word). Second, negative priming occurred for identical words, but not for semantically related words, whether related categorically or associatively. This pattern of results is consistent with a memory retrieval account, but not with an inhibition account of negative priming, and casts doubt on whether there is semantic negative priming for words.