Event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained from an identity priming task, where a green target had to be selected against a superimposed red distractor. Several priming conditions were realized in a mix of control (CO), negative priming (NP), and positive priming (PP) trials. PP and NP effects in reaction times (RTs) were significant. ERP results conceptually replicate earlier findings of left-posterior P300 reduction in PP and NP trials compared to CO. This ERP effect may reflect the detection of prime-probe similarity corresponding to the concept of a retrieval cue. A novel finding concerned amplitude increase of the frontal late positive complex (LPC) in the order NP, CO, and PP. NP therefore seemed to induce brain activity related to cognitive control and/or memory processes, with reduced LPC amplitude indicating effortful processing. Overall, retrieval-based explanations of identity NP are supported.
The hypothesis that retrieval of the prime response is responsible for the negative priming (NP) effect has gained popularity in recent studies of visual identity NP. In the current study we report an experiment in which we aimed to remove the response from the prime memory trace by means of spatio-temporal separation. Compared to an identical experiment without this separation (Ihrke et al., 2011), we find that the response-retrieval-specific interaction is absent indicating that the separation was successful in preventing response-retrieval. Still, both negative and positive priming are present as main effects which show that processes other than response-retrieval can produce NP. In addition, based on recordings of the eye-movements during task processing, we localize the NP effect in a target-selection process while positive priming manifests in facilitated response-selection. Our results are in line with a multiple-route view of NP.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.