Separate and Combined Effects of Location Cuing and Repetition Priming on Perceptual Encoding of Words

Abstract

We describe a methodology for investigating whether two manipulations exert independent effects on perception. This method avoids the strong scaling assumptions inherent to traditional analysis of variance techniques, and we used it to investigate the combined effects of cued visual attention and stimulus repetition. Subjects identified previously studied (primed) and new (unprimed) masked words that were presented to validly and invalidly cued locations for varying durations. Performance improved more rapidly with increasing exposure duration for primed than for unprimed, and for attended than for unattended, stimuli. We interpret this finding as indicating that both variables speed the rate of information acquisition. The speedup provided by priming and attention combined equaled the product of benefits for each alone, providing evidence they are serial, independent effects.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Challis

Brodbeck

(1992). Levels of processing affects priming in word fragment completion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 595–607.

Eriksen

C.W.

St. James

J.D.

(1986). Visual attention within and around the field of focal attention: A zoom-lens model. Perception & Psychophysics, 40, 225–240.

Grossberg

Stone

(1986). Neural dynamics of word recognition and recall: Attentional priming, learning, and resonance. Psychological Review, 93, 46–74.

Jacoby

L.L.

Hayman

C.A.G.

(1987). Specific visual transfer in word identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 456–463.

Jonides

(1981). Voluntary and involuntary control over the mind's eye movements. In Long

J.B.

Baddeley

A.D.

(Eds.), Attention and performance IX (pp. 187–203). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kosslyn

S.M.

(1996). Image and brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kucera

Francis

(1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.

Loftus

G.R.

(1978). On the interpretation of interactions. Memory & Cognition, 6, 312–319.

Loftus

G.R.

Busey

T.A.

Senders

J.W.

(1993). Providing a sensory basis for models of visual information acquisition. Perception & Psychophysics, 54, 535–554.

10.

Loftus

G.R.

Ruthruff

(1994). A theory of visual information acquisition and visual memory with special application to intensity-duration tradeoffs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 33–50.

11.

Mangun

G.R.

Hillyard

S.A.

(1991). Modulations in sensory-evoked brain potentials indicate changes in perceptual processing during visual-spatial priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17, 1057–1074.

12.

Masson

Borowsky

(1998). More than meets the eye: Context effects in word identification. Memory & Cognition, 26, 1245–1269.

13.

Pashler

(1987). Detecting conjunctions of color and form: Reassessing the serial search hypothesis. Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 191–201.

14.

Ratcliff

McKoon

(1997). A counter model for implicit priming in perceptual word identification. Psychological Review, 104, 319–343.

15.

Reinitz

M.T.

(1990). Effects of spatially directed attention on visual encoding. Perception & Psychophysics, 47, 497–505.

16.

Reinitz

M.T.

Alexander

(1996). Mechanisms of facilitation in primed perceptual identification. Memory & Cognition, 24, 129–135.

17.

Reinitz

M.T.

Demb

J.B.

(1994). Implicit and explicit memory for compound words. Memory & Cognition, 22, 687–694.

18.

Reinitz

M.T.

Wright

Loftus

G.R.

(1989). Effects of semantic priming on visual encoding of pictures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118, 280–297.

19.

Schacter

(1994, October). PET studies of implicit and explicit memory. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Memory Disorders Research Society, Cambridge, MA.

20.

Squire

L.R.

Ojemann

J.G.

Miezin

F.M.

Petersen

S.E.

Videen

T.O.

Raichle

M.E.

(1992). Activation of the hippocampus in normal humans: A functional anatomical study of memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 89, 1837–1841.

21.

Stelmach

L.B.

Herdman

C.M.

McNeil

K.R.

(1994). Attentional modulation of visual processes in motion perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 1–14.

22.

Ungerleider

L.G.

Mishkin

(1982). Two cortical visual systems. In Ingle

D.J.

Goodale

M.A.

Mansfield

R.J.W.

(Eds.), Analysis of visual behavior (pp. 549–586). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.