Response Priming with More or Less Biological Movements as Primes.

Abstract

Response priming in general is a suitable tool in cognitive psychology to investigate motor preactivations. Typically, compatibility effects reflect faster reactions in cases in which prime and target suggest the same response (i.e., compatible trials) compared with cases in which prime and target suggest opposite responses (i.e., incompatible trials). With moving dots that were horizontally aligned, Bermeitinger (2013) found a stable pattern of results: with short SOAs, faster responses in compatible trials were found; with longer SOAs up to 250 ms, faster responses in incompatible trials were found. It is unclear whether these results are specific to the special motion used therein or whether it generalizes to other motions. We therefore used other motions realized by arrangements of dots. In four experiments, we tested point-light displays (biological coherent walkers vs. less biological scrambled/split displays) as primes. In two experiments, eye gaze motions realized by moving dots representing irises and pupils (i.e., biological) versus the same motion either without surrounding face information or integrated in an abstract line drawing (i.e., less biological) were used. We found overall large positive compatibility effects with biological motion primes and also positive-but smaller-compatibility effects with less biological motion primes. Most important, also with very long SOAs (up to 1320 ms), we did not find evidence for negative compatibility effects. Thus, the pattern of positive-followed-by-negative-compatibility effects found in Bermeitinger (2013) seems to be specific to the materials used therein, whereas response priming in general seems an applicable tool to study motion perception.