Remi and Rouse: Quantitative Models for Long-Term and Short-Term Priming in Perceptual Identification

Abstract

The REM model originally developed for recognition memory (Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997) has recently been extended to implicit memory phenomena observed during threshold identification of words. We discuss two REM models based on Bayesian principles: a model for long-term priming (REMI; Schooler, Shiffrin, & Raaijmakers, 1999), and a model for short-term priming (ROUSE; Huber, Shiffrin, Lyle, & Ruys, in press). Although the identification tasks are the same, the basis for priming differs in the two models. In both paradigms we ask whether prior study merely reflects a bias to interpret ambiguous information in a certain manner, or instead leads to more efficient encoding. The observation of a 'both-primed benefit' in two-alternative forced-choice paradigms appears to show that both processes are present. However, the REMI model illustrates that the both-primed benefit is not necessarily indicative of an increase in perceptual sensitivity but might be generated by a criterion bias. The ROUSE model demonstrates how the amount of attention paid to the prime, and the consequent effect upon decision making, may lead to the reversal of the normal short-term priming effect that is observed in certain conditions.

The co-evolution of knowledge and event memory.

“…Priming studies typically present a word (the “event”); a later apparently unrelated test presents the same word for a test of knowledge retrieval, with the result that knowledge retrieval is affected by the earlier event presentation. Our prior modeling (e.g., Malmberg & Shiffrin, 2005; Schooler, Shiffrin, & Raaijmakers, 2001; Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997; Wagenmakers et al, 2003) and SARKAE account for these effects through a process in which the lexical trace for a given word is augmented by study of that word (the “prime”): When a word is studied an event memory is formed, but in addition, novel features of the event, such as the context of the experimental setting, are added to its lexical representation. When that word is later presented in a task requiring retrieval from knowledge (such as naming, perceptual identification, lexical decision), the context tends to be similar to that at study, increasing the match of the probe cues to the lexical trace, enhancing and/or biasing retrieval and predicting the priming results.…”

Nonword Repetition Priming in Lexical Decision Reverses as a Function of Study Task and Speed Stress.

“…Thus, for repeated nonwords instances are stored that contain the interpretation that this particular letter string is a nonword. Retrieval of such a trace speeds up 1 Researchers often distinguish between short-term priming and longterm priming (Bowers, 2000; see Wagenmakers et al, 2003, for a discussion of recent quantitative models of short-term and long-term priming). Short-term priming refers to a paradigm in which the prime stimulus is presented immediately prior to the target stimulus (e.g., Forster & Davis, 1984;Huber, Shiffrin, Lyle, & Ruys, 2001).…”

Modulation of the word frequency effect in recognition memory after an unrelated lexical decision task

“…Current models of memory generally explain repetition-priming effects in terms of retrieval of information from long-term memory (Raaijmakers, 2005;Schooler, Shiffrin, & Raaijmakers, 2001;van Maanen, van Rijn, & Taatgen, 2012;Wagenmakers, Huber, Raaijmakers, Shiffrin, & Schooler, 2003). The SAM-REM theory in particular (for a review, see Raaijmakers, 2008) provides an appropriate framework for the present study since it has been shown in the past to account for repetition priming effects in both lexical decision (Wagenmakers et al, 2004) and episodic recognition (Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997).…”