priming disappear, while stays intact? Why does long-term positive long-term negative priming

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1 By Sandila Tanveer Dr Ewald Neumann Department of Psychology University of Canterbury, NZ Why does long-term positive priming disappear, while long-term negative priming stays intact?

2 Priming Actions are typically not performed in a barren environment but rather in the presence of various unrelated stimuli. Several cognitive mechanisms have been shown to deal with these distractor stimuli to ensure adequate and efficient responding. Evidence suggests that features of such distractor stimuli are automatically integrated into action plans. Hence, repeating a stimulus leads to response facilitation if the same response has to be repeated (Positive priming), or response impairment if a different response is required (Negative priming).

3 Priming Theories Despite being widely studied, priming researchers fail to come up with a comprehensive explanation to address the wide variety of priming tasks. Researchers usually explain certain types of effects modulated within a specific experimental context. Modification Accounts (Abstractionist, PRS, Component Processing) Memory Based Accounts (Instance theory, Event file theory, S-R binding) Inhibition Accounts (Distractor inhibition) Eclectic Accounts (Houghton-Tipper, GMNP) Other Accounts (e.g., Temporal discrimination, Feature mismatch hypothesis, Global threshold/isam)

4 Priming Paradigm Integration of response-irrelevant stimuli into action plans can be investigated by primeprobe design. In a typical paradigm, participants respond to a target stimulus while ignoring a distractor. Where, priming is measured by probe reaction times (RTs) and error rates. This procedure thus offers a straightforward measure for short-term bindings between irrelevant information and responses. Priming paradigm appeals to cognitive theories as it captures the full, context-dependent behavioural potential of a stimulus and the control of action in general.

5 Design Our daily lives involve interacting with a large number of stimuli. Many of these stimuli occur not only once, but recur at different timescales. Current research adds to the line of inquiry by investigating the longevity of identity priming using ignored repetition (IR) and attended repetition (AR) conditions in selective attention tasks. Participants were required to name (identification task) the lower case prime target word followed by making a word/nonword judgement (classification task) to the lower case probe target while ignoring the upper case distractors. Experiment 1 explored short-lag priming by contrasting the results of the Co with the AR and IR manipulations. Experiment 2 explored the longevity of positive and negative priming effects obtained in Experiment 1 (p<0.05) by moving the probe 151 prime-probe couplets later than their yoked prime pair of words.

6 Sample trials in AR, IR & Co

7 Picture showing a typical sequence of events in a given trial. Participant has to name lower case prime target and making word/non-word judgment on lower case probe target while ignoring upper case distractor words.

8 Results Trials having RT less than 300ms and more than 3000ms were removed from analysis. 20% cut-off score was used for naming and LDT errors. Mean of Medians was taken after excluding error trials. Planned analysis on RT, Error, & Catch trial were done using independent sample t-test and ANOVA.

9 Longevity of priming effects Long-lag Stort-lag IR Co AR

10 Information Processing in Priming Sensory Input Feature Binding Stimulus Identification & Response Categorization Active Inhibition Response Generation Retrieval of Information Processing Episode

11 Short-lag priming Facilitation/inhibition can be induced due to sensory memory, feature bindings, & response activation processes. In AR condition, PP can result from matching target identification and response categorization where information is send instantly to response centres while the current and prior distractor information is inhibited. While in IR condition, the NP can result from mismatch between target. This creates a cognitive load on attention to resolve conflict; reassign stimulus identification and response codes; and send information to response centres while inhibiting the current distractor and prior target.

12 Long-lag priming Facilitation/inhibition can not be induced at level of sensory memory, feature bindings, and response activation processes due to decay. Priming effects can be attributed to the strength of the retrieved information to create facilitation/inhibition effect. In long-lag AR condition, the prior information processing episode is retrieved. Unfortunately, the retrieved information is unable to reach the necessary threshold to cause facilitation. Hence, the target repeat condition is processed in isolation like Co. In the long-lag IR condition, the mismatch of retrieved information creates cognitive load and enable it to reach the threshold to create inhibition.

13 Implications Interestingly, in the long-lag AR condition, the error data indicates the presence of PP (p<0.05). Hence, further experiments were designed To replicate long-lag NP effect. To modulate long-lag PP by repeating both the prime target and distractors.

14 Conclusion Although no long-lag PP was observed, long-lag NP was fully intact, and no different than the negative priming effect observed in the short-lag condition. Evidence of this sort is of immense theoretical significance as it could indicate that task irrelevant information leaves a memory trace that effects performance over time. By furthering our understanding of how selective attention and memory interact, our findings should ultimately have applications for individuals with maladies of attention and/or memory.

15 Thanks for taking interest