The effect of memory load on negative priming: An individual differences investigation

The effect of a verbal (Experiment 1) and a nonverbal (Experiment 2) memory load on negative priming was investigated by employing a concurrent memory task with a letter naming task. Across both experiments, negative priming was reliable only under conditions of zero memory load, suggesting that the processes that contribute to negative priming are resource demanding and dependent on a domain-free resource pool. Individual differences in negative priming were observed, such that high working memory capacity subjects showed reliable negative priming whereas low working memory capacity subjects did not. The results suggest that the negative priming effect results from allocation of controlled attention and that individual differences in working memory capacity correspond to the ability to efficiently handle irrelevant information.     

Further evidence that negative priming in the Stroop color-word task is equivalent in older and younger adults

In 2 experiments, possible adult age differences in negative priming were explored using several variants of the Stroop color-word task. Negative priming was at least as high in the older adults as in the younger adults in every variant. Negative priming varied as a function of condition, but the age equivalence was unaffected. This result was true even when the possibility of general slowing was taken into account. Across conditions, interference and negative priming were positively correlated. The results do not permit a clear choice between the 2 major theoretical explanations of negative priming, inhibition and memory retrieval; they do show that negative priming can be systematically manipulated within an experimental paradigm.     

工作记忆负载对位置干扰子激活加工和抑制加工的影响

针对工作记忆（WM）负载对干扰子加工的影响存在认知控制机制和负载特异机制两种分歧观点的争议及Park等人的负载特异机制研究中存在的不足,文章尝试采用干扰效应和负启动效应双指标考察了三种不同类型的WM负载对位置干扰子加工的影响。结果表明,WM负载对位置干扰子加工的影响存在双重作用机制（认知控制机制和负载特异机制）;目标刺激与干扰子刺激的属性一致时,亦可得出负载特异机制观点,且可将WM任务与选择性注意任务之间竞争的资源锁定为知觉处理资源;导致上述两种观点争议的原因是以往研究未将干扰子加工过程分离为激活加工阶段和抑制加工阶段来考察;用双指标分离干扰子加工阶段的研究思路和方法不但可解决这两种观点的争议且可为两者的统合奠定基础。     

Hypnotic suggestibility,cognitive inhibition,and dissociation

We examined two potential correlates of hypnotic suggestibility: dissociation and cognitive inhibition. Dissociation is the foundation of two of the major theories of hypnosis and other theories commonly postulate that hypnotic responding is a result of attentional abilities (including inhibition). Participants were administered the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C. Under the guise of an unrelated study, 180 of these participants also completed: a version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale that is normally distributed in non-clinical populations; a latent inhibition task, a spatial negative priming task, and a memory task designed to measure negative priming. The data ruled out even moderate correlations between hypnotic suggestibility and all the measures of dissociation and cognitive inhibition overall, though they also indicated gender differences. The results are a challenge for existing theories of hypnosis.     

On the difference between response inhibition and negative priming: Evidence from simple and selective stopping

Negative priming is a commonly observed after-effect in studies concerning inhibition. Effects of the preceding trial are also found in other paradigms, like the stop signal paradigm. In the present study, stop signals were introduced in a negative priming paradigm and the relation between stop signal inhibition and negative priming was investigated. In Experiment 1, we used a simple stop signal task. Stopping data clearly suggest that stopping performance was not influenced by negative priming. Interestingly, on no-signal probes the negative priming effect disappeared after successful inhibition of the response on the prime trial. On the contrary, when inhibition failed, the negative priming effect remained. In Experiment 2, we used the selective stop signal task. As in Experiment 1, inhibition of motor responses was not influenced by negative priming. The hypothesis that negative priming disappeared due to a general nonspecific stop was confirmed in this experiment, as a negative priming effect was found after both successful and unsuccessful behavioral inhibition. The results of both experiments show that response inhibition is not influenced by negative priming, and that negative priming is only affected after a successful general stop.     

Investigating a memory-based account of negative priming: support for selection-feature mismatch

Using typical and modified negative priming tasks, the selection-feature mismatch account of negative priming was tested. In the modified task, participants performed selections on the basis of a semantic feature (e.g., referent size). This procedure has been shown to enhance negative priming (P. A. MacDonald, S. Joordens, & K. N. Seergobin, 1999). Across 3 experiments, negative priming occurred only when the repeated item mismatched in terms of the feature used as the basis for selections. When the repeated item was congruent on the selection feature across the prime and probe displays, positive priming arose. This pattern of results appeared in both the ignored- and the attended-repetition conditions. Negative priming does not result from previously ignoring an item. These findings strongly support the selection-feature mismatch account of negative priming and refute both the distractor inhibition and the episodic-retrieval explanations.     

Central inhibition ability modulates attention-induced motion blindness

Impaired motion perception can be induced in normal observers in a rapid serial visual presentation task. Essential for this effect is the presence of motion distractors prior to the motion target, and we proposed that this attention-induced motion blindness results from high-level inhibition produced by the distractors. To investigate this, we compared the extent of the attention-induced motion blindness effect with performance on central inhibition tasks: Stroop colour naming and negative priming. A negative correlation between Stroop interference and motion performance reflected that low Stroop scores, indicative of strong inhibition ability, was associated with more severe impairments in motion perception. This association could not be explained by individual differences in fluid intelligence, task switching or response speed. Negative priming was not specifically associated with attention-induced motion blindness. The results confirm that attention can modulate motion perception and suggest that the processes involved may be shared with high-level cognitive abilities.     

Selective attention and priming: Inhibitory and facilitatory effects of ignored primes

The priming effects of ignored information have been studied in Stroop displays (Neill, 1977) and with spatially superimposed drawings (Tipper, in this issue); naming of probes related to ignored primes is delayed in these experiments (“negative priming”). This negative priming effect is confirmed in a list reading task in Experiment 1, which used partially superimposed letters, and Experiment 2, which used spatially separated letters. Furthermore, Lowe (1979) using Stroop colour words observed that changing the nature of the probe such that it did not require selection from a competing word reversed the priming effects of the ignored word from inhibition to facilitation. Experiment 3 confirmed this observation when subjects selected a red letter from a green letter. Two models are suggested to account for this result. In the first, negative priming is a product of the ignored prime and subsequent probe being encoded both as a stimulus to be ignored and one to be named (Allport, Tipper and Chmiel, in press; Lowe, in press). This dual encoding is ambiguous, requiring further processing before response can be output. The other model suggests that negative priming reflects inhibition of response to ignored information, slowing naming latencies to probe stimuli that require the same response. Experiment 4 attempts to differentiate between the models, and the latter inhibition view is preferred.     

Priming effects of age stereotypes on memory of older adults in Korea

This study examined priming effects of age stereotypes on memory of Korean older adults. Age stereotypes refer to general beliefs about older adults. Through a priming task, older participants were briefly exposed to positive or negative age stereotypes without awareness. Before and after the priming task, free‐recall tasks were given to participants to measure their memory performance. Changes in performance caused by the priming task were estimated as priming effects of age stereotypes. Participants showed better memory performance after they were exposed to positive stereotypes during the priming task (positive priming effects). In contrast, participants showed worse memory performance after they were exposed to negative age stereotypes during the priming task (negative priming effects). The magnitude of priming effects was similar in positive and negative stereotypes. This result suggests that the implicit activation of age stereotypes can change memory of Korean elderly in both positive and negative ways.     

Attention level and negative priming in hierarchical patterns1

Abstract: This study explored object processing associated with attention level dependent on task, using a paradigm of negative priming. Participants were required to identify target characters that appeared at either the global or local level in hierarchically structured patterns. Two experiments were conducted to examine how the global and local characters were processed in the attended and unattended levels. In the results of Experiment 1, where stimuli were presented for 10 ms, negative priming was observed in a local‐directed task, but not in a global‐directed one. These results suggested that the inhibition of local characters in the unattended level did not occur during global attention. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that negative priming was observed in both global‐ and local‐directed tasks in the 500 ms presentation, showing that inhibition in the unattended level occurred. As a result, the exposure duration influences inhibition in the unattended, especially the local level. At short exposure duration, the local characters are not inhibited when one directs attention to the global characters, whereas these are inhibited at long exposure duration.     

The relationship between cognitive ability and positive and negative priming in identity and spatial priming tasks

The authors examined whether stimulus activation and inhibition in the identity priming task are related to the temporal lobe, and whether these processes in the spatial priming task are related to the parietal lobe. Forty participants performed spatial and identity positive and negative priming tasks, the Vandenberg Mental Rotation task, and the Digit Span task. Both men and women showed significant positive and negative priming in the identity and spatial tasks with no gender difference. The magnitude of identity positive priming was predicted by the Digit Span task, and the magnitude of spatial positive priming was predicted by the mental rotation task. Only women showed a correlation between spatial ability and spatial negative priming. The results are partially consistent with the dorsal-ventral model of cognitive inhibition.     

The Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Positive and Negative Priming in Identity and Spatial Priming Tasks

The authors examined whether stimulus activation and inhibition in the identity priming task are related to the temporal lobe, and whether these processes in the spatial priming task are related to the parietal lobe. Forty participants performed spatial and identity positive and negative priming tasks, the Vandenberg Mental Rotation task, and the Digit Span task. Both men and women showed significant positive and negative priming in the identity and spatial tasks with no gender difference. The magnitude of identity positive priming was predicted by the Digit Span task, and the magnitude of spatial positive priming was predicted by the mental rotation task. Only women showed a correlation between spatial ability and spatial negative priming. The results are partially consistent with the dorsal-ventral model of cognitive inhibition.     

Asymmetric switch cost and backward inhibition: Carryover activation and inhibition in switching between tasks of unequal difficulty.

Asymmetric switch cost, observed when switching between tasks varying in difficulty, shows that the difference between repeat and switch trials is greater when switching to the easier task. Early explanations of this effect attributed this pattern to both positive priming of the difficult task and negative priming of the easier task, but more recent models have focused only on activation processes. The role of inhibition in asymmetric switch cost was examined using backward inhibition, a more direct measure of task-set inhibition. The results indicated asymmetric backward inhibition, with greater sequential inhibition of the easier task (i.e., easy-difficult-easy sequences). Switch costs, however, showed both typical and reversed asymmetry (greater cost when switching from the easy to the difficult task), depending on the relative difficulty of task pairs. This pattern of results indicates that switch costs are attributable to both activation and inhibition processes.     

Levels of selection and capacity limits

Subjects performed a visual target-detection task in eight experiments. We examined the effects of word relevancy (word in relevant or irrelevant location) and display load (1-4 words) on physical, semantic, and controlled processing of nontargets. Interwoven with the detection task was a test-word identification task that was used to measure priming potency of nontargets. Physical and semantic levels of processing were measured in terms of identity and semantic priming, respectively. Nontarget primes were repeated as test words in identity priming. Nontarget primes were semantic associates of test words in semantic priming. Controlled processing of nontargets was measured in terms of recognition memory on a subsequent test. All measures increased with word relevancy and decreased with display load. The priming effects remained intact even when word presentation was speeded up and controlled processing was sharply curtailed. The data indicate that all levels of processing are selective and capacity limited.     

Is masked priming modulated by memory load? A test of the automaticity of masked identity priming in lexical decision

One of the key assumptions of the masked priming lexical decision task (LDT) is that primes are processed without requiring attentional resources. Here, we tested this assumption by presenting a dual-task manipulation to increase memory load and measure the change in masked identity priming on the targets in the LDT. If masked priming does not require attentional resources, increased memory load should have no influence on the magnitude of the observed identity priming effects. We conducted two LDT experiments, using a within-subjects design, to investigate the effect of memory load (via a concurrent matching task Experiment 1 and a concurrent search task in Experiment 2) on masked identity priming. Results showed that the magnitude of masked identity priming on word targets was remarkably similar under high and low memory load. Thus, these experiments provide empirical evidence for the automaticity assumption of masked identity priming in the LDT.     

Impulsivity and anxiety differences in cognitive inhibition

An identity negative priming task was employed to investigate cognitive inhibition in 245 undergraduates. The task presented consecutively a prime and a probe display that contained a target and a distractor. Negative priming is observed when subjects must respond to a target in the probe display that had been a distractor in the prime display. This task also served to study the Eriksen interference effect by comparing a condition in which the target and the distractor had the same identity with a condition in which they had different identities. Subjects completed the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire designed to measure Gray's anxiety and impulsivity dimensions. Results showed that impulsives had a lower cognitive inhibition than non-impulsives, whereas impulsive women also showed a greater Eriksen interference effect than non-impulsive women. Furthermore, no differences in task performance were found between anxious and non-anxious groups. Our discussion considers the importance of studying cognitive functioning in personality research.     

Semantic negative priming in picture categorization and naming

Ignoring a particular stimulus can hamper subsequent attended processing of the same stimulus, a phenomenon known as 'negative priming'. Previous research has yielded partial support for the claim that the effect results from the attentional inhibition of central representations, as suggested by the fact that it appears to extend to semantic associates of ignored stimuli. In the current experiment, participants categorized or named pictorial stimuli with superimposed distractor pictures; the effect of unrelated, identical, or categorically related previously ignored pictures was investigated. Furthermore, visual similarity between categorically related picture pairs was manipulated in the naming task. The results indicated negative priming from identical ignored pictures irrespective of task. However, semantic negative priming was observed in the categorization task only. In the naming task, even visual overlap between categorically related picture pairs failed to induce negative priming. These findings argue against a central locus of the negative priming effect.     

The interaction between schizotypy and latent inhibition: modulation by experimental parameters

Two recent experiments (Della Casa et al., in press) yielded the typical reduced latent inhibition (LI) in high vs low schizotypy subjects after a slow, irregularly presented masking task (Stroop task), and reduced LI in low vs high schizotypy subjects after a fast, regularly presented masking task. The present experiment was aimed at testing whether speed or regularity was responsible for the different results. The present slow, regular experiment replicated the results of the former slow, irregular experiment, i.e. reduced LI in high schizotypals and significant LI in low schizotypals, indicating that speed and not regularity is the critical experimental variable. The modulation of the schizotypy—latent inhibition relationship can be attributed to differences in attentional resources or the time available to process the to-be-target stimuli during preexposure, in accordance with the hypothesis of Lubow and Gewirtz, 1995 that automatic processing of these stimuli is critical for the development of latent inhibition in adult humans. In addition, results on Stroop and negative priming effects are presented.     

Respective contributions of inhibition and knowledge levels in class inclusion development: a negative priming study

Dempster ( Dempster, 1995 ; Dempster & Corkill, 1999 ) proposed that developmental changes in performance on Piagetian tasks could be related to changes in inhibitory efficiency more than to logical development. In this study, the negative priming paradigm was adapted to the class inclusion task in order to investigate the role of inhibition and knowledge levels in the development of class inclusion. Participants were pre‐tested on two inclusion tasks, the standard Piagetian task and Markman's modification task, and assigned to different knowledge levels: empirical, and logical necessity. Children were then tested on a priming version of the class inclusion task. Results showed a negative priming effect, indicating that the irrelevant ‘subclass comparison strategy’ was actively inhibited during the processing of the class inclusion task. This effect was found to vary as a function of knowledge levels, indicating that the need for inhibition was reduced when children had attained logical necessity.     

Auditory negative priming in younger and older adults

Two experiments are reported in which performance of old and young adults in an auditory negative priming task was compared. Auditory negative priming was not smaller in old than in young adults. This result was independent of whether or not conditions were present that had previously been assumed to favour episodic retrieval, as opposed to inhibitory processes, as a basis of the negative priming phenomenon. The data from the present auditory negative priming experiments are incompatible with the global assumption that the efficiency of inhibitory attentional processes in general diminishes across the adult life span.