Negative priming from masked words: Retrospective prime clarification or center-surround inhibition?

Abstract

Masked repetition and semantic priming effects were examined in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, a masked-prime lexical decision task followed a phase of detection, semantic, or repetition judgments about masked words. In Experiment 2 participants made speeded pronunciations to target words after they tried to identify masked primes, and the proportion of semantically and identically related prime-target pairs was varied. Center-surround theory CT. H. Carr & D. Dagenbach, 1990; D. Dagenbach, T. H. Carr, & A. Wilhelmsen, 1989) predicts positive repetition priming but negative semantic priming when people attempt, but fail, to extract the meanings of masked words. A retrospective prime-clarification account, in contrast, predicts that semantic and repetition priming effects will vary (being positive or negative) as a function of expectations about the prime-target relation. The data support a retrospective prime-clarification account, which, unlike center-surround theory, correctly predicted negative repetition priming effects.

The categorical structure of knowledge for famous people (and a novel application of Centre-Surround theory)☆

“…Kahan (2000) proposed an account somewhat similar to that of Durante and Hirshman (1994), in that the representation of a target interacts with the previously activated representation of a prime. The key difference is that a slowed response to a related target is attributed to the effort involved in attempting to achieve awareness of the masked prime, but does not require success on every trial.…”

“…According to Kahan (2000) the key condition that must be met before Retrospective Prime Clarification will operate is that participants have expectations of the prime-target relationship, because the codes searched will be those representing the expected relationship. A participant with no expectation will not use the RPC strategy.…”

“…A participant with no expectation will not use the RPC strategy. Kahan (2000) used words as primes and targets, and the related pairs were either close associates or repetitions in each of two experiments. Two methods were used to encourage participants to expect either an associative or repetition relationship.…”

“…Such a control condition is sometimes included in priming experiments (though not in Dagenbach et al (1989) or Kahan (2000)) in order to ascertain whether priming effects are due to speeding of responses to targets by related primes, or slowing of responses to targets by unrelated primes, compared to the speed of responses to targets preceded by unfamiliar primes. Negative priming makes the control condition redundant because it shows a slowing of responses to related targets compared to unrelated targets.…”

“…Experiment 3 investigated whether the locus of the priming effects lay within the semantic system. It should be noted that other theories have been proposed to explain negative priming from masked primes: the Retrospective Priming account of Durante and Hirshman (1994), and the Retrospective Prime Clarification account introduced by Kahan (2000). Experiment 4 investigated whether these might provide an explanation for the results of Experiment 1-3.…”