Comparing different kinds of words and word-word relations to test an habituation model of priming

Abstract

Huber and O'Reilly (2003) proposed that neural habituation exists to solve a temporal parsing problem, minimizing blending between one word and the next when words are visually presented in rapid succession. They developed a neural dynamics habituation model, explaining the finding that short duration primes produce positive priming whereas long duration primes produce negative repetition priming. The model contains three layers of processing, including a visual input layer, an orthographic layer, and a lexical-semantic layer. The predicted effect of prime duration depends both on this assumed representational hierarchy and the assumption that synaptic depression underlies habituation. The current study tested these assumptions by comparing different kinds of words (e.g., words versus non-words) and different kinds of word-word relations (e.g., associative versus repetition). For each experiment, the predictions of the original model were compared to an alternative model with different representational assumptions. Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction that non-words and inverted words require longer prime durations to eliminate positive repetition priming (i.e., a slower transition from positive to negative priming). Experiment 2 confirmed the prediction that associative priming increases and then decreases with increasing prime duration, but remains positive even with long duration primes. Experiment 3 replicated the effects of repetition and associative priming using a within-subjects design and combined these effects by examining target words that were expected to repeat (e.g., viewing the target word 'BACK' after the prime phrase 'back to'). These results support the originally assumed representational hierarchy and more generally the role of habituation in temporal parsing and priming.

A Neural Habituation Account of the Negative Compatibility Effect

“…The accuracy results are consistent with the typical priming effects observed in paradigms explained by the neural habituation theory, showing a shift from positive priming (compatible higher than incompatible) to negative priming (compatible lower than incompatible) as primes are presented for longer. However, the time course of this transition is substantially faster than repetition priming with words, which exhibit a priming crossover between prime durations of 150 to 400 ms (Rieth & Huber, 2017) in contrast to the crossover between 34 and 68 ms seen here with orientation priming. The fast time scale can be explained by the fact that orientation perception occurs very early in the visual stream, while complex stimuli such as words require much longer to be processed.…”

“…NEURAL HABITUATION ACCOUNT OF THE NCE As seen in Figure 5, accuracy in the neutral prime condition is relatively flat across prime durations and generally both the compatible and incompatible conditions were lower or equal to the neutral baseline, with the exception of an 8 ms compatible prime, which produced accuracy that was higher than the neutral prime condition. While perhaps surprising, the finding of deficits for both target repetition priming and foil repetition priming as compared to a baseline condition with unrelated stimuli has been found in many previous word priming experiments Huber, Tian, et al, 2008;Rieth & Huber, 2017;Weidemann et al, 2005Weidemann et al, , 2008 and this aspect of the data is predicted by both the Bayesian ROUSE model (Huber et al, 2001) and the neural habituation model (Huber & O'Reilly, 2003). In light of this, we focus on the difference between the compatible and incompatible conditions to assess changes in the direction of priming.…”

“…The neural habituation model successfully explained behavior in the orientation identification accuracy task (Experiment 1) and used these same perceptual dynamics to explain key results from the arrow direction reaction time NCE paradigm (Experiment 2). The model inherited most of its parameter values from a word priming experiment by Rieth and Huber (2017), demonstrating its ability to generalize across tasks and stimuli. This generalization provides additional support for the theory that neural habituation serves a vital function in perception, parsing the stream of visual objects by habituating to recently viewed objects, allowing unobstructed perception of subsequent objects.…”

“…In the ensuing years, the neural habituation model explained a wide variety of behavioral paradigms that examine short-term inter-stimulus effects, appealing to the general properties of neural dynamic behavior, rather than paradigm-specific explanations. These applications of the neural habituation model include repetition and semantic priming of words (Huber, Tian, et al, 2008;Jacob & Huber, 2020;Potter et al, 2018;Rieth & Huber, 2017), repetition priming of faces (Rieth & Huber, 2010), change detection with words (Davelaar et al, 2011), semantic satiation (Tian & Huber, 2013), inhibition of return with spatial cueing (Rieth & Huber, 2013), priming of affective valence (Irwin et al, 2010), immediate repetition in recognition memory (Huber, Clark, et al, 2008), and temporal search for targets NEURAL HABITUATION ACCOUNT OF THE NCE in the 'attentional blink' paradigm (Rusconi & Huber, 2018). Here we add to this growing list, demonstrating that a long-standing debate surrounding the causes of the 'negative compatibility effect', or NCE (Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998) can be resolved with the neural habituation model.…”

Neural habituation enhances novelty detection: an EEG study of rapidly presented words

“…The habituation model is a general account of perceptual dynamics and beyond its application to other word identification effects (Rieth and Huber 2017;Huber et al 2008b;Potter et al 2018;Davelaar et al 2011), it has been applied to repetition effects with faces (Rieth and Huber 2010), categories Huber 2010, 2013), spatial attention (Rieth and Huber 2013), and visual scenes (Irwin et al 2010), in tasks ranging from episodic recognition (Huber et al 2008a) to the attentional blink (Rusconi and Huber 2018). However, none of the prior studies examined the relationship between neural habituation and the perceptual decision making process (novelty detection).…”