In defense of abstractionist theories of repetition priming and word identification

Abstract

There is a great deal of interest in characterizing the representations and processes that support visual word priming and written word identification more generally. On one view, these phenomena are supported by abstract orthographic representations that map together visually dissimilar exemplars of letters and words (e.g., the letters Ala map onto a common abstract letter code a*), On a second view, orthographic codes consist in a collection of episodic representations of words that interact in such a way that it sometimes looks as if there are abstract codes. Tenpenny (1995) contrasted these general approaches and concluded by endorsing the episodic account, arguing that no evidence demands that we posit abstract orthographic representations. This review reconsiders the evidence and argues that a variety of priming and nonpriming research strongly supports the conclusion that abstract orthographic codes exist and support priming and word identification. On this account, episodic representations are represented separately from abstract orthographic knowledge and contribute minimally to these functions.There is a great deal of interest in characterizing the representations and processes that support the improved processing of stimuli repeated during an experiment-the repetition priming effect. Indeed, two different types of repetition priming have been intensively studied from two quite different perspectives. On the one hand, researchers interested in memory have tended to focus on long-term repetition priming, in which facilitation can last minutes, hours, and sometimes longer (Sloman, Hayman, Ohta, Law, & Tulving, 1988). For example, participants are generally faster and more accurate in making lexical decisions to test words encoded a few minutes or hours previously in a study list (see, e.g., Scarborough, Cortese, & Scarborough, 1977). On the other hand, researchers interested in language processing have tended to focus on short-term repetition priming in order to address questions regarding how single words are identified. In a typical short-term priming task, a pattern mask (e.g., ######) is replaced by a prime word that is briefly flashed (e.g., 50 msec), which in turn is replaced by the target. Under these conditions, primes are typically unnoticed by the participants, but these items nevertheless facilitate processing of targets when the prime and target are the same. One key attribute of masked priming is that it lasts only a few seconds (e.g., Forster & Davis, 1984).Among memory researchers, interest in long-term repetition priming was inspired by the observation that densely amnesic patients show robust (sometimes normal) priming despite poor (sometimes chance) performance I thank Chad Marsolek, Michael Masson, Kate Nation, and Keith Rayner for valuable suggestions that greatly improved this paper. Correspondence should be addressed to 1. S. Bowers, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol SS8 lIN, England (e-mail: j.bowers@bris.ac.uk). 83on explicit re...

Scopolamine but Not Lorazepam Modulates Face Repetition Priming A Psychopharmacological fMRI Study

“…Nevertheless fusiform cortex repetition suppression was again found for famous faces. The reduced response to repetition of famous faces is consistent with "abstractionist" theories of repetition priming, which predict priming only for stimuli with preexisting representations (Tenpenny 1995;Bowers 2000).…”

Episodic memory reflected in printed word naming

“…Thus, physical and procedural (bottom-up and top-down) matches produce extra priming, relative to conditions in which the study-test connection is purely conceptual. As Bowers (2000) wrote, "there has been a consistent trend for specificity effects across studies, and if a simple sign test were to be carried out on all these studies, the effect would be significant" (p. 87). Although this trend supports the episodic view (Tenpenny, 1995), the evidence is certainly not overwhelming.…”

“…Moreover, word perception is rarely an end in itself, because people typically integrate words into discourse. Given these facts, it seems evident that some form of abstraction takes place in the mental lexicon (Bowers, 2000) or in memory at large.…”

Orthography plays a critical role in cognate priming: Evidence from French/English and Arabic/French cognates

“…On the basis of a combination of modality-specific and perceptually abstract priming, a number of authors have argued that visual word priming is mediated by preexisting lexical-orthographic codes (e.g., Bowers, 1999Bowers, , 2000Bowers & Michita, 1998;Morton, 1979). On this general view, a by-product of reading a word is that its orthographic representation is strengthened; this in turn facilitates its subsequent identification.…”