The kinds of information that support novel associative object priming and how these differ from those that support item priming

Abstract

We investigated how the information that supports novel associative and item object priming differs under identical study/test conditions. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants rated the meaningfulness of sentences linking two object pictures at study. At test, they performed either a size judgement or an associative recognition memory task on intact, recombined and novel picture (Experiment 1) or word (Experiment 2) associations. Associative priming was modulated by subjective meaningfulness of the encoded links, and depended on study/test perceptual overlap. In contrast, item priming was neither affected by the meaningfulness of the sentences nor by study/test changes in the stimulus presentation format. Associative priming and recognition were behaviourally dissociated, and associative recognition was probably too slow to have seriously contaminated associative priming. In Experiment 3, participants performed a perceptually oriented task during both experimental phases, and both associative and item priming were observed. These results suggest that associative priming depends on stored associative semantic and perceptual information when the test task requires flexible retrieval of associative information. Under the same conditions, item priming may only require activation of items' semantic properties. When both study and test tasks stress perceptual processing, retrieval of perceptual information is sufficient to support both kinds of priming.

Keywords:

• Implicit memory
• Priming
• Novel associations
• Recognition memory

We thank Catherine Dibble and Katherine Jones for their assistance with data collection.

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant number SFRH/BD/41637/2007].

We thank Catherine Dibble and Katherine Jones for their assistance with data collection.

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant number SFRH/BD/41637/2007].

Notes

¹ The reason we used Number of Presentations as a between-subject factor was because we wished to minimise as much as possible semantic overlap across our pool of object pictures. For that reason, we were restricted with the amount of truly distinctive and easily nameable objects we could select. Considering that many of our statistical analyses required some kind of division (e.g., into meaningful and meaningless categories), and because associative priming experiments require double the stimuli of single priming experiments (i.e., each trial effectively comprises two pictures), there would not be sufficient trials within each condition to represent it accurately had we used Number of Presentations as a within-subject factor.

² We should point out that the difference in accuracy between Intact_meaningful and Intact_meaningless did reach significance for the one-presentation condition. However, we believe this to have been the result of a Type-I error for the following reasons. First, there were fewer trials in this calculation than in the overall means. Second, there were on average 3.2 more trials in the Intact_meaningless than in the Intact_meaningful condition, which could have reduced power in the latter condition. Third, no differences were found for the three-meaningful condition. Fourth, a 2 (Number of Presentations) × 3 (Type of Association: Intact_meaningful, Intact_meaningless, Recombined) mixed repeated measures ANOVA revealed neither a main effect of Type of Association nor an interaction (both p > .10).

³ Because associative (but not item) priming was modulated by meaningfulness, associative priming was defined as the difference between Recombined and Intact_meaningful pairs in this analysis.

⁴ It should be noted however that such single dissociations could result simply due to differences in task sensitivity (see Berry, Shanks, Speekenbrink, & Henson, 2012, for a review).