Affective matching moderates S–R binding

Abstract

We investigated the moderating influence of affective matching on S–R binding processes in a sequential priming study in which positive and negative nouns had to be categorised as referring to a person or to an object. Irrelevant positive and negative distractor words (adjectives) were integrated with responses into S–R episodes if they had the same valence as the target (affective match condition). In this case, repeating the prime distractor in the probe led to a retrieval of the prime response, which facilitated performance for response repetition sequences but had no effect on performance when responses changed between prime and probe. However, if target and distractor had different valences (affective mismatch condition), no interaction of distractor relation and response relation occurred, indicating that distractors were less likely to be associated with responses into event files during the prime trial episode. Findings reveal that affective mismatches are detected automatically and modulate a binding of irrelevant information with responses.

Keywords:

• Binding
• Event files
• Episodic retrieval
• Affective matching

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this article was supported by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to KR (DFG RO 1272/6–1).

Notes

¹Focusing on the effect of distractor-to-distractor repetitions and their interaction with response relation rules out alternative explanations that have been advanced for negative priming paradigms. For example, an interaction of distractor-to-distractor repetitions with response relation cannot be explained on the basis of an inhibition of the prime distractor (Tipper, 1985), nor would such a pattern be predicted by an episodic retrieval of “do not respond” tags (Neill, Valdes, Terry, & Gorfein, 1992) or by a feature mismatch between prime and probe (Park & Kanwisher, 1994).

²The data reported here were collapsed across two independent replications of the same experiment. Since all aspects of the results were identical in both experiments (in particular, the crucial three-way interaction was significant in both experiments), we decided to report the data as a single study.

³Using the different valence condition as a baseline leads to a confounding of specific stimulus–response binding effects with a valence change from prime to probe. However, using sequences of different valence distractors as baseline yields virtually identical results (see Table 1). In particular, the three-way interaction was significant in this analysis as well, F(1, 97)=7.20, p<.01, =.07.

⁴The same 2×2×2 repeated-measurement ANOVA on mean prime RTs yielded no significant effects (all Fs<1.6). However, for mean error rates of the prime trials, a main effect of prime valence congruency emerged, F(1, 97)=8.89, p<.01, =.08, indicating that participants made somewhat more errors in affectively matching prime trials (2.9%) than in affectively mismatching prime trials (2.4%; all other Fs<2.2).

⁵The asymmetric pattern of distractor repetition effects with significant facilitation for response repetitions and only a slight and non-significant delay for the response alternation sequences is due to the main effect of distractor repetitions. Repeating the prime distractor as a distractor in the probe had a general facilitating effect that can be explained by an enduring inhibition of the distractor (Tipper & Cranston, 1985). Such an inhibition effect is independent from the binding and retrieval of distractor and response information and was not modulated by affective congruency in the prime.

⁶Given the results reported by Frings and Rothermund (2009), it might appear surprising that two words become integrated as a perceptual unit at all. It has to be noted, however, that Frings and Rothermund (2009) reported evidence for a reduction rather than an elimination of S–R bindings. Another crucial difference between the two studies is that target and distractor stimuli were presented in different colours in the study by Frings and Rothermund (2009), which might allow for an easy perceptual separation.

⁷We want to thank an anonymous reviewer for directing our attention to ambivalent objects.