Automaticity and Flexibility of S-R Retrieval During Priming.

Hope Tobin,Elizabeth Race

doi:10.3390/brainsci7060065

Abstract

Learned associations between stimuli and responses (S–R associations) make important contributions to behavioral and neural priming. The current study investigated the automaticity and flexibility of these S–R associations and whether the global task context in which they occur modulates the impact of S–R retrieval on priming. Participants engaged in a semantic repetition priming task in which S–R retrieval is known to influence priming. Across participants, repetition priming occurred in global task contexts (i.e., combination of activated task sets) that either remained consistent or shifted across time. In the stable context group, the global task context at study matched that at test, whereas in the shifting context group, the global task context at study differed from that at test. Results revealed that the stability of the global task context did not affect the magnitude of S–R contributions to priming and that S–R contributions to priming were significant in both the stable and shifting context groups. These results highlight the robustness of S–R contributions to priming and indicate that S–R associations can flexibly transfer across changes in higher-level task states.

Highlights

Priming is a powerful example of repetition-related learning in which repeated exposure to a stimulus facilitates subsequent behavioral and neural processing
Together with evidence that higher-level task contexts can influence the magnitude of behavioral facilitation in priming tasks [18], these results suggest that the automatic retrieval of S–R associations during priming may be modulated by top-down factors related to global task states
The experiment was arranged as a between-subjects design, with half of the participants assigned to the stable context group

Summary

Introduction

Priming is a powerful example of repetition-related learning in which repeated exposure to a stimulus facilitates subsequent behavioral and neural processing. Accumulating behavioral and neural evidence indicates that priming can reflect learned associations between stimuli and responses (S–R associations), during speeded classification tasks [4,5,6,7,8,9] (for review see [10]). S–R associations form when a response is repeatedly executed in the presence of a stimulus. When one repeatedly makes a yes/no response about whether an object (e.g., “Knife”) is dangerous (e.g., “Yes”), an S–R association (i.e., “Knife-Yes”) is formed. Subsequent presentations of a stimulus can trigger the rapid retrieval of this learned S–R association.

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion