Facilitation versus inhibition in the masked priming same–different matching task

Abstract

In the past years, growing attention has been devoted to the masked priming same–different task introduced by Norris and Kinoshita (2008, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General). However, a number of researchers have raised concerns on the nature of the cognitive processes underlying this task—in particular the suspicion that masked priming effects in this task are mostly inhibitory in nature and may be affected by probe–prime contingency. To examine the pattern of facilitative/inhibitory priming effects in this task, we conducted two experiments with an incremental priming paradigm using four stimulus–onset asynchronies (13, 27, 40, and 53 ms). Experiment 1 was conducted under a predictive-contingency scenario (probe–prime–target; i.e., “same” trials: HOUSE–house–HOUSE vs. house–water–HOUSE; “different” trials: field–house–HOUSE vs. field–water–HOUSE), while Experiment 2 employed a zero-contingency scenario (i.e., “same” trials: HOUSE–house–HOUSE vs. house–water–HOUSE; “different” trials: field–field–HOUSE vs. field–water–HOUSE). Results revealed that, for “same” responses, both facilitation and inhibition increased linearly with prime duration in the two scenarios, whereas the pattern of data varied for “different” responses, as predicted by the Bayesian Reader model.

Keywords:

• Masked priming
• Incremental priming
• Word recognition

Acknowledgments

This research has been partially supported by Grants PSI2009–08889/PSIC, PSI2008–04069/PSIC, and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 CSD2008–00048 from the Spanish Government. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on a previous version of the present paper.

Notes

¹ In Giraudo and Grainger's (2001) Experiment 1, they used a 0-ms prime as the within-condition baseline. However, for comparison purposes, we have employed the 14-ms SOA condition because it is closer to the one employed in the present experiments.

² As in Experiment 1, session did not interact with any of the other factors (all ps > .24); in this experiment, the main effect of session was not significant in the RT analysis, F(3, 9) = 1.18, MSE = 224, p > .30.

³ In addition, the only way the participants know that a given item has been repeated three times is once they have actually made the same–different decision. That is, in “different” trials under zero contingency, the probe and the prime are always the same until the participant encounters the different stimulus. What happens here is that participants in the masked priming same–different task are able to tell whether probe and target are the same or not. Note here that Norris and Kinoshita (2010) have already demonstrated that prime diagnosticity is relevant with visible, unmasked primes, whereas it does not play a role with masked primes.