Repetition priming and face processing: Priming occurs within the system that responds to the identity of a face

A familiar stimulus that has recently been recognized will be recognized a second time more quickly and more accurately than if it had not been primed by the earlier encounter. This is the phenomenon of “repetition priming”. Four experiments on repetition priming of face recognition suggest that repetition priming is a consequence of changes within the system that responds to the familiarity of a stimulus. In Experiment 1, classifying familiar faces by occupation facilitated subsequent responses to the same faces in a familiarity decision task (Is this face familiar or unfamiliar?) but not in an expression decision task (Is this face smiling or unsmiling?) or a sex decision task (Is this face male or female?). In Experiment 2, familiar faces showed repetition priming in a familiarity decision task, regardless of whether a familiarity judgment or an expression judgment had been required when the faces were first encountered. Expression decisions to familiar faces again failed to show repetition priming. In Experiment 3, familiar faces showed repetition priming in a familiarity decision task, regardless of whether a familiarity judgment or a sex judgment had been asked for when the faces were first encountered. Sex decisions to familiar faces again failed to show repetition priming. In Experiment 4, familiarity decisions continued to show repetition priming when a brief presentation time with encouragement to respond while the face was displayed reduced response latencies to speeds comparable to those for sex and expression judgments in Experiments 1 to 3. The results are problematic for theories that propose that repetition priming is mediated by episodic records of previous acts of stimulus encoding.     

Where perception meets memory: A review of repetition priming in visual search tasks

What we have recently seen and attended to strongly influences how we subsequently allocate visual attention. A clear example is how repeated presentation of an object’s features or location in visual search tasks facilitates subsequent detection or identification of that item, a phenomenon known as priming. Here, we review a large body of results from priming studies that suggest that a short-term implicit memory system guides our attention to recently viewed items. The nature of this memory system and the processing level at which visual priming occurs are still debated. Priming might be due to activity modulations of low-level areas coding simple stimulus characteristics or to higher level episodic memory representations of whole objects or visual scenes. Indeed, recent evidence indicates that only minor changes to the stimuli used in priming studies may alter the processing level at which priming occurs. We also review recent behavioral, neuropsychological, and neurophysiological evidence that indicates that the priming patterns are reflected in activity modulations at multiple sites along the visual pathways. We furthermore suggest that studies of priming in visual search may potentially shed important light on the nature of cortical visual representations. Our conclusion is that priming occurs at many different levels of the perceptual hierarchy, reflecting activity modulations ranging from lower to higher levels, depending on the stimulus, task, and context—in fact, the neural loci that are involved in the analysis of the stimuli for which priming effects are seen.     

Relaxing decision criteria does not improve recognition memory in amnesic patients

An important question about the organization of memory is whether information available in non-declarative memory can contribute to performance on tasks of declarative memory. Dorfman, Kihlstrom, Cork, and Misiaszek (1995) described a circumstance in which the phenomenon of priming might benefit recognition memory performance. They reported that patients receiving electroconvulsive therapy improved their recognition performance when they were encouraged to relax their criteria for endorsing test items as familiar. It was suggested that priming improved recognition by making information available about the familiarity of test items. In three experiments, we sought unsuccessfully to reproduce this phenomenon in amnesic patients. In Experiment 3, we reproduced the methods and procedure used by Dorfman et al. but still found no evidence for improved recognition memory following the manipulation of decision criteria. Although negative findings have their own limitations, our findings suggest that the phenomenon reported by Dorfman et al. does not generalize well. Our results agree with several recent findings that suggest that priming is independent of recognition memory and does not contribute to recognition memory scores.     

The temporal dynamics of visual object priming

Priming reflects an important means of learning that is mediated by implicit memory. Importantly, priming occurs for previously viewed objects (item-specific priming) and their category relatives (category-wide priming). Two distinct neural mechanisms are known to mediate priming, including the sharpening of a neural object representation and the retrieval of stimulus–response mappings. Here, we investigated whether the relationship between these neural mechanisms could help explain why item-specific priming generates faster responses than category-wide priming. Participants studied pictures of everyday objects, and then performed a difficult picture identification task while we recorded event-related potentials (ERP). The identification task gradually revealed random line segments of previously viewed items (Studied), category exemplars of previously viewed items (Exemplar), and items that were not previously viewed (Unstudied). Studied items were identified sooner than Unstudied items, showing evidence of item-specific priming, and importantly Exemplar items were also identified sooner than Unstudied items, showing evidence of category-wide priming. Early activity showed sustained neural suppression of parietal activity for both types of priming. However, these neural suppression effects may have stemmed from distinct processes because while category-wide neural suppression was correlated with priming behavior, item-specific neural suppression was not. Late activity, examined with response-locked ERPs, showed additional processes related to item-specific priming including neural suppression in occipital areas and parietal activity that was correlated with behavior. Together, we conclude that item-specific and category-wide priming are mediated by separate, parallel neural mechanisms in the context of the current paradigm. Temporal differences in behavior are determined by the timecourses of these distinct processes.     

FN400和LPC对熟悉性和回想的特异性指向分析

双加工理论认为熟悉性和回想是情景记忆的两个独立过程,其重要证据是ERP研究中FN400和LPC可以分别指示熟悉性和回想。但也有研究证明FN400是概念启动和熟悉性共同作用的结果,而LPC也不能准确的反映回想加工,因此,将其作为双加工理论证据的可靠性需进一步讨论。未来需进一步明确概念启动和熟悉性影响FN400的前提条件,并在提高生态效度和控制额外变量的同时明晰LPC的指向性,同时探究熟悉性和回想在再认过程中的具体作用方式。     

Effects of repetition priming on recognition memory: testing a perceptual fluency-disfluency model

Five experiments explored the effects of immediate repetition priming on episodic recognition (the "Jacoby-Whitehouse effect") as measured with forced-choice testing. These experiments confirmed key predictions of a model adapted from D. E. Huber and R. C. O'Reilly's (2003) dynamic neural network of perception. In this model, short prime durations pre-activate primed items, enhancing perceptual fluency and familiarity, whereas long prime durations result in habituation, causing perceptual disfluency and less familiarity. Short duration primes produced a recognition preference for primed words (Experiments 1, 2, and 5), whereas long duration primes produced a preference against primed words (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). Experiment 2 found prime duration effects even when participants accurately identified short duration primes. A cued-recall task included in Experiments 3, 4, and 5 found priming effects only for recognition trials that were followed by cued-recall failure. These results suggest that priming can enhance as well as lower familiarity, without affecting recollection. Experiment 4 provided a manipulation check on this procedure through a delay manipulation that preferentially affected recognition followed by cued-recall success.     

Haven't we met before? The effect of facial familiarity on repetition priming

Within the word recognition literature, word‐frequency and hence familiarity has been shown to affect the degree of repetition priming. The current paper reports two experiments which examine whether familiarity also affects the degree of repetition priming for faces. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed that familiarity did moderate the degree of priming in a face recognition task. Low familiarity faces were primed to a significantly greater degree than high familiarity faces in terms of accuracy, speed, and efficiency of processing. Experiment 2 replicated these results but additionally, demonstrated that familiarity moderates priming for name recognition as well as face recognition. These results can be accommodated within both a structural account of repetition priming ( Burton, Bruce & Johnston, 1990 ) and an Episodic Memory account of repetition priming (see Roediger, 1990 ), and are discussed in terms of a common mechanism for priming, learning and the representation of familiarity.     

When sex isn't special: Priming onto a sex decision

Recognition of famous faces is speeded by prior exposure. This repetition priming has been shown for familiarity judgements (familiar/unfamiliar), semantic judgements (British/American), and naming. However, no benefit of priming has been found onto a sex judgement made to an image of a face. The absence of priming is normally explained by appealing to the fact that sex judgements can be made to a face without needing to access memory for that person, and that priming has its effects within the memory system. Here we ask subjects to make sex judgements to famous people's surnames (e.g., Tyson, Geldof), a task that requires them to access their memories for people. Under these conditions we observe the normal pattern of priming. We argue that structural, rather than episodic models of processing fit the data most naturally.     

FN400和N400是相同的ERP成分：来自图形材料的证据

本研究通过比较记忆编码阶段语义启动引起的N400效应和提取阶段熟悉性引起的FN400效应的地形图考察图形材料诱发的N400和FN400是否是相同的ERP成分。实验结果发现,语义启动引起的N400效应和熟悉性引起的FN400效应的地形图没有显著差异。这说明图形材料诱发的FN400和N400是相同的ERP成分,两者都反映了语义加工。本研究为FN400效应反映了语义启动而不是熟悉性的观点提供了新的实验证据。     

Three-step priming in lexical decision

In two experiments, we investigated mediated two-step priming (e.g., from LION to STRIPES via TIGER) and three-step priming (e.g., from MANE to STRIPES via LION and TIGER). Experiment 1 showed robust two-step priming in the double lexical decision task. In Experiment 2, we tested for three-step priming and investigated the possibility that it is not association strength based on free association, but frequency of co-occurrence, that causes three-step priming. Co-occurrence has been proposed as a measure of familiarity and semantic relatedness. Significant three-step priming was obtained. Lexical co-occurrence could not account for the effect. However, a more global measure of semantic similarity that includes the similarity of the contexts in which concepts occur revealed that the three-step pairs were semantically related. If this global measure provides a proper estimate of the semantic relatedness of our items, then three-step priming is consistent not only with spreading activation models, but also with distributed memory models and the compound cue model.     

Does the familiarity bias hypothesis explain why there is no masked priming for “NO” decisions?

Traditional "activation" views of masked priming explain the identity priming effect in terms of facilitation due to ‘pre-activation’ of stored representations. Norris and Kinoshita's (2008) Bayesian Reader theory of masked priming instead explains priming in terms of the evidence that the prime contributes towards the decision required to the target. In support of the Bayesian Reader account, Norris and Kinoshita showed that the absence of priming for nonwords in the lexical decision task and for targets requiring a Different decision in the same–different match task can be explained based on a single principle. Against this, Bowers (2010) argued that the absence of priming should be explained instead by a combination of sublexical priming and "familiarity bias". As evidence, Bowers cited Bodner and Masson’s (1997) finding that nonword priming did emerge with targets presented in visually unfamiliar cAsE-AlTeRnAtEd format. We present evidence that this finding was due to the use of an ambiguous letter in case-alternated format; when using unambiguous letters, we consistently failed to find priming of case-alternated nonwords. We suggest that the Bayesian Reader, rather than the familiarity bias hypothesis, explains the absence of priming.     

Intact conceptual priming in the absence of declarative memory

Priming is an unconscious (nondeclarative) form of memory whereby identification or production of an item is improved by an earlier encounter. It has been proposed that declarative memory and priming might be related-for example, that conceptual priming results in more fluent processing, thereby providing a basis for familiarity judgments. In two experiments, we assessed conceptual priming and recognition memory across a 5-min interval in 5 memory-impaired patients. All patients exhibited fully intact priming in tests of both free association (study tent; at test, provide an association to canvas) and category verification (study lemon; at test, decide: Is lemon a type of fruit?). Yet the 2 most severely amnesic patients performed at chance on matched tests of recognition memory. These findings count against the notion that conceptual priming provides feelings of familiarity that can support accurate recognition judgments. We suggest that priming is inaccessible to conscious awareness and does not influence declarative memory.     

双言舌尖现象的产生机制：来自粤语-普通话双言者的证据

舌尖现象(Tip-of-the-Tongue phenomenon, TOT)是言语产生中的一种常见现象。国外研究发现, 双语者和单语者的舌尖现象差异很大。双言和双语既相似, 又存在差异。以粤语–普通话双言者为被试, 比较了普通话熟练和不熟练的被试在使用不同语言命名时的TOT产生率。结果发现：(1)粤语–普通话双言者的TOT率受普通话熟练程度影响。普通话不熟练的粤语–普通话双言者用普通话命名时产生更高的TOT率。(2)语言启动能够调节粤语–普通话双言者的普通话熟练程度与TOT产生的关系。在语言启动条件下, 普通话熟练的粤语–普通话双言者的TOT率更高。(3)粤语–普通话双言者的TOT产生机制符合部分激活理论的预言。     

The locus of semantic priming effects in person recognition

Semantic priming in person recognition has been studied extensively. In a typical experiment, participants are asked to make a familiarity decision to target items that have been immediately preceded by related or unrelated primes. Facilitation is usually observed from related primes, and this priming is equivalent across stimulus domains (i.e., faces and names prime one another equally). Structural models of face recognition (e.g., IAC: Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, 1990) accommodate these effects by proposing a level of person identity nodes (PINs) at which recognition routes converge, and which allow access to a common pool of semantics. We present three experiments that examine semantic priming for different decisions. Priming for a semantic decision (e.g., British/American?) shows exactly the same pattern that is normally observed for a familiarity decision. The pattern is equivalent for name and face recognition. However, no semantic priming is observed when participants are asked to make a sex decision. These results constrain future models of face processing and are discussed with reference to current theories of semantic priming.     

Toward the neural basis of verbal priming: A cognitive-neuropsychological synthesis

Repetition priming is a mnemonic phenomenon that has attracted considerable attention from neuropsychologists and cognitive scientists. In an attempt at elucidating the putative mechanisms of priming, the present review draws on evidence from both domains. The review is restricted to verbal priming of visually presented stimuli—an area that accounts for the majority of empirical studies of priming. A number of theoretical accounts are presented. The interim conclusion is that neither multiple systems nor unitary system-multiple process theories can adequately explain the data on priming, although both contain many valid components. An integrative model is proposed to improve the explanation of the empirical evidence. The central assertion of the proposed model is that repetition priming depends on perceptual processes that can be mapped on specific neural systems. It is postulated that individual differences in perceptual processing ability predict variability in memory performance. It is proposed that data-driven priming of verbal stimuli critically depends on the activity of primary and secondary visual cortices in the right hemisphere, whereas conceptually-driven priming is hypothesized to rely on the activities of higher order tertiary association cortices in language areas and more anterior neocortical areas.     

Enhanced semantic priming in synesthetes independent of sensory binding

Synesthesia is the phenomenon in which individuals experience unusual involuntary cross-modal pairings. The evidence to date suggests that synesthetes have access to advantageous item-specific memory cues linked to their synesthetic experience, but whether this emphasis on item-specific memory cues comes at the expense of semantic-level processing has not been unambiguously demonstrated. Here we found that synesthetes produce substantially greater semantic priming magnitudes, unrelated to their specific synesthetic experience. This effect, however, was moderated by whether the synesthetes were projectors (their synesthetic experience occurs in their representation of external space), or associators (their synesthetic experience occurs in their ‘mind’s eye’). That is, the greater a synesthetes’s tendency to project their experience, the weaker their semantic priming when the task did not require them to semantically categorize the stimuli, whereas this trade-off was absent when the task did have that requirement.     

On finding negative priming from distractors

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.     

A neural network model of inhibitory processes in subliminal priming

Masked priming experiments have revealed a precise set of facilitatory and inhibitory visuomotor control processes. Most notably, inhibitory effects have been identified in which prime-target compatibility induces performance costs and prime-target incompatibility induces performance benefits. We argue that this profile of data is commensurate with an “emergency braking mechanism”, whereby responses can be retracted as a result of changing sensory evidence. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a neural network-based explanation of this phenomenon. This is obtained through the use of feedforward inhibition to implement backward masking, lateral inhibition to implement response competition, and opponent processing mechanisms to implement response retraction. Although the model remains simple, it does a very good job of reproducing the available masked priming data. For example, it reproduces a large spectrum of reaction time data across a number of different experimental conditions. Perhaps most notably, however, it also reproduces lateralized readiness potentials that have been recorded while subjects perform different conditions. In addition, it provides a concrete set of testable predictions.     

词汇熟悉度对非熟练中英双语者语言理解转换中非目标语言激活的影响

采用改造后的长时重复启动范式,探讨母语为汉语的非熟练中英双语者语言理解转换中非目标语言的激活层面,以及词汇熟悉度的影响。实验1考察学习阶段不同熟悉度的非目标词在测验阶段呈现时能否出现长时重复启动效应,从而检测双语者语言理解转换中非目标语言是否自动激活,实验2探究学习阶段不同熟悉度的非目标词在测验阶段以翻译对等词呈现时能否出现长时重复启动效应,从而检测双语者语言理解转换中非目标语言的语义层面能否激活。结果发现:非熟练中英双语者语言理解转换中非目标语言不管为中文还是英文,都能自动激活,但激活层面会受到词汇熟悉度的影响;当非目标语言为二语时,熟悉度高的二语词能激活到语义层面,熟悉度低的二语词只能激活到词汇层面;当非目标语言为一语时,不管词汇熟悉度高还是低,都能够激活到语义层面。     

Priming of abstract letter representations may be universal: The case of Arabic

Recent research on the Roman alphabet has demonstrated that the magnitudes of masked repetition priming are equivalent for letter pairs that have similar visual features across cases (e.g., c-C) and for letter pairs with dissimilar features (e.g., g-G). Here, we examined whether priming of abstract letter representations occurs in an orthographic system, Arabic, in which the letters show an intricate number of contextual forms. Arabic does not have a lowercase/uppercase distinction, but the letters exhibit different forms that depend on their position (initial, medial, final, or isolated) and their connectivity. Importantly, some letters look quite different across positions (e.g., (symbol in text) and (symbol in text), which correspond to the letter 'ayn), whereas others look very similar (e.g. (symbol in text), and (symbol in text), which correspond to the letter fā'). We employed a masked priming same-different task, in which native speakers of Arabic decided whether a target letter was the same as or different from a reference letter presented in a different position (middle vs. isolated). The results showed masked repetition priming effects of the same magnitude for letter pairs with similar and with dissimilar visual features across letter positions. These data support the view that priming of abstract letter representations is a universal phenomenon.