Superficial priming in episodic recognition

Abstract

We explored the effect of superficial priming in episodic recognition and found it to be different from the effect of semantic priming in episodic recognition. Participants made recognition judgments to pairs of items, with each pair consisting of a prime item and a test item. Correct positive responses to the test item were impeded if the prime and test item were superficially related; this was the case when the items were words and the crucial relationship was phonological and orthographic as well as when the items were letter strings and the crucial relationship was orthographic. The results of further experiments suggested that the priming effect cannot be attributed to a process of discounting or to habituation in a familiarity assessment process.In recognizing an entity, one performs an act of classification. In episodic recognition, one classifies an entity as having been encountered previously in a particular context. In semantic recognition (often termed lexical decision), one classifies an entity simply as having been encountered previously, without regard to context. Because recognition judgments are made quickly and effortlessly, they are subject to priming effects. Such effects occur when a recognition judgment to a test item is either facilitated or impeded consequent to prior processing of a prime item. Our research program seeks to learn about recognition by studying the effects of priming on recognition judgments. Pursuing this goal, Ngo, Dopkins, & Sargent (2007) explored the effect of semantic priming in episodic recognition. They found that such priming impeded correct negative episodic recognition responses but had no effect on positive recognition trials.The present study explored the effect of superficial -that is, phonological and/or orthographic -priming in episodic recognition. The effect of this sort of priming has not previously been explored using traditional priming procedures. However, several studies of the role of processing fluency in recognition judgments have examined the situation in which participants make episodic recognition judgments to test words a short time after having read superficially

Exploring the mental representation underlying familiarity assessment.

“…Although the basic manipulation of Experiment 1 was the same as for Dopkins et al (2010a), previous work suggested that the familiarity representation for the experiment would be more likely to record perceptual information than the familiarity representation of Dopkins et al Whereas perceptual relatedness had no effect on the false-alarm rate for Dopkins et al, perceptual relatedness increased the false-alarm rate in Experiment 1. These results suggest that the familiarity representation for the experiment recorded perceptual information.…”

“…The goal was to show that the false-alarm rate to the test word was greater in the Related than the Unrelated condition. On the basis of the results of Dopkins et al (2010a), we also expected the hit rate to be lower in the Related than the Unrelated condition. This result, which will be discussed later, was not of primary interest.…”

“…We reasoned that the absence of a relatedness effect on the false-alarm rate when the retention interval was long would suggest that the shorter retention interval of Experiment 1 was crucial to the relatedness effect that was observed in the false-alarm-rate data of that experiment, and by implication, under the proposed interpretation, to the recording of phonological/orthographic information in the familiarity representation for that experiment. On the basis of the results of Dopkins et al (2010a), and Experiment 1, we expected that phonological/ orthographic relatedness would decrease the hit rate. Again, this result was not of primary interest.…”

“…The procedure for the Long Interval condition was the same as for the Short Interval condition except that the participant solved 6 mental arithmetic problems before responding to the test pairs. The number of problems was selected so that the retention interval in the Long Interval condition roughly matched the average retention interval in the experiments of Dopkins et al (2010a). 6 DOPKINS, SARGENT, AND NGO tapraid5/cae-cae/cae-cae/cae00412/cae0181d12z xppws Sϭ1 9/18/12 7:34 Art: 2011-0250…”

“…The primary goal of the present study was to further clarify the role of perceptual information in familiarity-based recognition 1 The results of Dopkins et al (2010a) differ from the results of previous studies of the role of fluency in recognition judgments, in which previous processing of various word and non-word material has typically resulted in increases in the false-alarm rate for phonologically-related words (Rhodes & Kelley, 2003;Whittlesea & Williams, 2001). In these fluency studies, however, participants have performed more complex tasks involving either the preceding material or the test words before making recognition judgments to the test words.…”