Comparing Repetition Priming Effects in Words and Arithmetic Equations: Robust Priming Regardless of Color or Response Hand Change.

Ailsa Humphries,Ewald Neumann,Zhe Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02326

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that stimulus repetition can lead to reliable behavioral improvements. Although this repetition priming (RP) effect has been reported in a number of paradigms using a variety of stimuli including words, objects, and faces, only a few studies have investigated mathematical cognition involving arithmetic computation, and no prior research has directly compared RP effects in a linguistic task with an arithmetic task. In two experiments, we used a within-subjects design to investigate and compare the magnitude of RP, and the effects of changing the color or the response hand for repeated, otherwise identical, stimuli in a word and an arithmetic categorization task. The results show that the magnitude of RP was comparable between the two tasks and that changing the color or the response hand had a negligible effect on priming in either task. These results extended previous findings in mathematical cognition. They also indicate that priming does not vary with stimulus domain. The implications of the results were discussed with reference to both facilitation of component processes and episodic memory retrieval of stimulus–response binding.

Highlights

Repetition priming (RP) refers to improved processing of a stimulus when that stimulus, or a similar one, is repeated compared to when it appears the first time
Comparing RT in Words and Arithmetic Tasks be influenced by the similarity between the primed/studied items and the unprimed/new items, there is evidence that repetition priming (RP) is remarkably robust, indicating that RP can occur at multiple levels of abstraction depending on task demand
There was no significant main effect of condition, or task by condition interaction, in either error rates or RTs. These results indicate that a change in hand between the study and test blocks did not reduce the magnitude of RP in either the word or the math task

Summary

Introduction

Repetition priming (RP) refers to improved processing of a stimulus when that stimulus, or a similar one, is repeated compared to when it appears the first time. There are two commonly used paradigms: the prime-probe couplet paradigm, in which a prime, whose response may or may not be required, is followed almost immediately by a probe (e.g., Dehaene et al, 1998; Reynvoet et al, 2002; Kunde et al, 2003); and the study-test block paradigm, in which both the study and test blocks consist of a series of trials, and a response is required on every trial (e.g., Dobbins et al, 2004; Horner and Henson, 2009, 2011; Salimpoor et al, 2010) In both paradigms, the relationship between the prime and probe or between items in the study and test blocks is manipulated. The presence of RP shows that behavior is not just driven by the current stimulus situation but is affected by what has been processed in previous stimulus situations (Schacter, 1990)

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