Episodic Priming Research Articles

Social power modulates individuals’ neural responses to monetary and social rewards

Although previous research has shown that social power modulates individuals’ sensitivity to rewards, it is currently unclear whether social power increases or decreases individuals’ sensitivity to rewards. This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the effects of social power on individuals’ neural responses to monetary and social rewards. Specifically, participants underwent an episodic priming task to manipulate social power (high-power vs. low-power) and then completed monetary and social delayed incentive tasks while their behavioral responses and electroencephalograms (EEG) were recorded. According to ERP analysis, during the anticipatory stage, low-power individuals exhibited a greater cue-P3 amplitude than high-power individuals in both monetary and social tasks. In the consummatory stage, though no impact of social power on the reward positivity (RewP) was found, low-power individuals showed a higher feedback-P3 (FB-P3) amplitude than high-power individuals, regardless of task types (the MID and SID tasks). In conclusion, these results provide evidence that social power might decrease one’s sensitivity to monetary and social rewards in both the anticipatory and consummatory stages.

Does the sense of power influence reputational concern? Tests with episodic and semantic power priming

Reputational concern shapes various social behaviours, since having a negative reputation often results in receiving negative social consequences such as ostracism and punishment. As such, individuals are motivated to avoid displaying socially disapproved behaviour. Previous studies have found that individuals with power (i.e., those who can asymmetrically influence others) tend to show various behaviours that would damage their reputation (e.g., aggression and exploitation). Taken together, we hypothesised that power would be associated with the extent to which individuals are concerned about their reputation. More specifically, we hypothesised that those who have a high and low sense of power would experience reduced and increased reputational concern, respectively. To test the relationship, we conducted three preregistered studies with commonly used power priming methods: episodic priming (Studies 1 and 3) and semantic power priming (Study 2). In Studies 1 and 2, the power priming methods failed to significantly influence the sense of power or reputational concern. In Study 3, we sought to overcome potential methodological issues with online episodic priming, and a modified high power episodic priming was successful. Yet, we did not find evidence for the hypothesised relationship between the experimentally induced sense of power and reputational concern. Our three studies offer valuable implications not only for further research on the relationship between reputational concern and power but also for the effectiveness of power priming methods.

A behavioural investigation of power and gender heterogeneity in operations management under uncertainty

Purpose The paper aims to explore how power and gender influence decision making in an operational and risky context. Design/methodology/approach The authors run a laboratory experiment. The experimental factors are power and operational profitability. Power is manipulated using an episodic priming task, while profitability, by changing a newsvendor-type product’s procurement cost. Participants’ risk attitude is captured using a risk lottery. Findings Participants deviate from the optimal order regardless of the power condition and their risk profile. Risk-seeking women order consistently more than risk-seeking men, which allow women to offer a higher service level. In the low-profit condition, men prefer to make more conservative decisions, which allow them to place orders that are closer to the economical benchmark, where both men’ induced power and the risk-seeking tendencies from both genders play a role. Behavioural models in the high-power condition explain the observed differences in ordering behaviours. Originality/value This paper provides behavioural research to explore how differences in power and gender, and their links with risky decision making, influence decision making in an uncertain operations management context, representing thus an important departure from mainstream studies.

Does Power Increase Self-Control? Episodic Priming May Not Provide the Answer

Powerful people (e.g., political and business leaders) should be able to control their impulses and act in line with long-term rather than short-term interests. However, theories of power suggest different answers to the question whether the basic experience of feeling powerful decreases (e.g., Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003) or increases self-control performance (e.g., Magee & Smith, 2013). We conducted a pre-registered direct replication of the only experiment testing the effects of power on self-control (Joshi & Fast, 2013, Study 3). In contrast to the original results, social power, operationalized by episodic priming, did not affect temporal discounting. A possible explanation is the fact that the power priming failed to elevate participants’ sense of power. Thus, the null findings challenge the power priming paradigm rather than the two theories from which opposite predictions were derived. In order to understand how power affects self-control, future research may need to rely on other manipulations.

The Accentuation Bias

The present research explores how people’s place in a power hierarchy alters their representations of valued objects. The authors hypothesized that powerlessness produces an accentuation bias by altering the physical representation of monetary objects in a manner consistent with the size-to-value relationship. In the first three experiments, powerless participants, induced through episodic priming or role manipulations, systematically overestimated the size of objects associated with monetary value (i.e., quarters, poker chips) compared to powerful and baseline participants. However, when value was inversely associated with size (i.e., smaller objects were more valuable), the powerless drew these valued objects smaller, not larger. In addition, the accentuation bias by the powerless was more pronounced when the monetary value associated with the object was greater, increased when the object was physically present, and was mediated by differences in subjective value. These findings suggest that powerlessness fosters compensatory processes that guide representations of valued objects.

Discriminating Semantic from Episodic Relatedness in Young and Older Adults

ABSTRACT The ability of young (aged 18–30) and older (aged 60–80) adults to discriminate pre-experimental (semantic) from experimental (episodic) associations was examined. Participants studied a list containing semantically related and unrelated word pairs and then made either associative recognition (Experiments 1a and b) or semantic relatedness (Experiment 2) judgments at various response deadlines. For associative recognition judgments, both young and older adults benefited from semantic relatedness, leading to more hits for related than unrelated pairs, and at the long response deadline, older adults' performance on those pairs matched that of young participants. Also, both young and older adults demonstrated superior discrimination for unrelated lures whose members had originally been studied in related pairs – evidence for recall-to-reject processing in both age groups. In making semantic relatedness judgments, both young and older adults showed an episodic priming effect. When older adults can rely on long-standing associations, their performance resembles that of young adults – both in associative recognition and in episodic priming.

Adult aging effects on semantic and episodic priming in word recognition.

Two experiments compared automatic semantic and episodic priming effects in adult aging. In the 1st experiment, target words were semantically primed; in the 2nd experiment, targets were primed by repetition of semantically unrelated words. Both experiments involved a pronunciation task with response signals at fixed times following target onset. Consequently, priming was measured as improvement in the percentage of correct responses. Priming was also calculated with speed-accuracy measures of intercept and slope. Both types of priming effect were significant in the percentage correct and slope measures, but no age group differences were found. Furthermore, the magnitudes of the priming effects were equivalent. The age-resistant nature of semantic and episodic priming, as well as evidence for a common theoretical mechanism, is discussed.

Explicit Contamination Contributes to Aging Effects in Episodic Priming: Behavioral and ERP Evidence

We examined the impact of explicit contamination on age-related changes in episodic priming. We recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from older and younger adults to primed and unprimed nouns tested in a recognition memory task. Results revealed that the magnitude of priming was greater in the younger adults. ERPs revealed a priming effect in the younger adults that was absent in older adults. Findings suggest that explicit contamination may account for the reported aging effect: Item memory was correlated with episodic priming and ERP priming in younger adults, but not older adults; item memory was associated with episodic priming after aging effects were controlled for; and the topographies of the young's priming and item memory effects were indistinguishable. Given the apparent vulnerability to contamination by explicit memory, we suggest caution when researchers use an episodic priming paradigm to assess aging effects in implicit memory.

Building episodic connections: Changes in episodic priming with age and dementia.

Previous studies of associative encoding that used explicit retrieval tasks have shown both age- and dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT)-related declines, but such results may be biased by group differences in explicit retrieval. In the present experiment, the authors assessed implicit associative encoding for 25 younger adults (ages 18-25), 73 healthy older adults (ages 59-91), and 65 adults with DAT (ages 59-91) during a speeded word-naming task using an episodic priming measure. Episodic priming refers to the facilitation in responding to a target word after repetition of both words in a prime-target pair, in comparison with simple repetition of the target word with a new prime on each presentation. In contrast with other studies of implicit associative encoding that did not use an implicit episodic priming measure, the present study found both age- and DAT-related declines in associative encoding under conditions of massed learning trials.

Episodic priming and memory for temporal source: event-related potentials reveal age-related differences in prefrontal functioning.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from young (M = 25) and older (M = 71) adults during a recognition memory paradigm that assessed episodic priming. Participants studied two temporally distinct lists of sentences (each with two unassociated nouns). At test, in response to the nouns, participants made old-new, followed by remember (context)-know (familiarity) and source (i.e., list) judgments. Both young and older adults showed equivalent episodic priming effects. However, compared to the young adults, the older adults showed a greater source performance decrement than item memory performance decrement. Both age groups showed equivalent posterior-maximal old-new ERP effects. However, only the young produced a frontal-maximal, late onset old-new effect that differed as a function of subsequent list attribution. Because source memory is thought to be mediated by prefrontal cortex, we conclude that age-related memory differences may be due to a deficit in a prefrontal cortical system that underlies source memory and are not likely to be due to an age-related decline in episodic priming.

Episodic priming and memory for temporal source: Event-related potentials reveal age-related differences in prefrontal functioning.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from young (M = 25) and older (M = 71) adults during a recognition memory paradigm that assessed episodic priming. Participants studied two temporally distinct lists of sentences (each with two unassociated nouns). At test, in response to the nouns, participants made old-new, followed by remember (context)-know (familiarity) and source (i.e., list) judgments. Both young and older adults showed equivalent episodic priming effects. However, compared to the young adults, the older adults showed a greater source performance decrement than item memory performance decrement. Both age groups showed equivalent posterior-maximal old-new ERP effects. However, only the young produced a frontal-maximal, late onset old-new effect that differed as a function of subsequent list attribution. Because source memory is thought to be mediated by prefrontal cortex, we conclude that age-related memory differences may be due to a deficit in a prefrontal cortical system that underlies source memory and are not likely to be due to an age-related decline in episodic priming.

Derived Stimulus Relations Produce Mediated and Episodic Priming

If derived stimulus relations can serve as a beginning behavioral model of semantic meaning, many of the cognitive findings shown with semantic relations should apply to derived stimulus relations. The present study examined whether priming in a lexical decision task occurs in equivalence relations. In the primary experiment, subjects were trained to form three 3- member equivalence classes of “word-like” nonsense words. Subjects were then given a battery of lexical recognition tasks that included previously trained equivalence class members. The priming effect for stimuli in an equivalence class, whether stimulus relations were directly trained or derived, was as strong as that previously reported for associated words. Control conditions show that these effects were due to derived stimulus relations, not to alternative sources of control. Priming through equivalence classes provides one of the more robust instances of what in the cognitive literature are termed “episodic priming” and “mediated priming.” These results provide some additional support for the idea that derived stimulus relations are a useful preliminary behavioral model of semantic relations, and that they supply a useful procedure for research on priming more generally.

Affective and Identity Priming with Episodically Associated Stimuli

In the present experiments, participants first memorised a set of nonword word pairs. During a subsequent priming phase, the nonwords and words served as primes and targets respectively. We examined (a) whether a nonword facilitates the processing of target words with the same valence as the word with which the nonword was associated, relative to target words with a different valence (episodic affective priming) and (b) whether priming is most pronounced for the specific word that was associated with the nonword (episodic identity priming). When target words were affectively categorised as positive or negative (Experiments 1 and 3), significant episodic affective priming was observed. This result was only obtained with short (300msec) but not long (1000msec) delays between the onset of target and prime, suggesting that the observed affective priming effects were due to automatic processes. Nonwords also influenced the affective categorisation of affectively congruent targets that were not presented during the learning phase (Experiment 4). Additional identity priming was observed in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 3. When target words were pronounced (Experiment 2), only identity priming was found. The implications of these results for the study of affective priming, episodic priming, implicit memory, and evaluative conditioning are discussed.

Adding new word associations to semantic memory: Evidence for two interactive learning components

The addition of newly learned word associations to semantic memory was investigated in three experiments. In these experiments word pairs were repeatedly presented as prime-target pairs in a lexical decision task. Performance on repeated pairs (both pre-experimentally associated and initially unrelated pairs) was compared to that on neutral pairs. In Experiments 1 and 2, effects of prior study (episodic priming) were observed but since this episodic priming effect was equal for both conditions it could not be concluded that the new associations had been added to semantic memory. In Experiment 3 some evidence was found that the newly learned word associations had been added to semantic memory. This occurred only after presenting the word pairs for several trials in paired-associate learning. The results are interpreted as supporting a model that distinguishes two memory components that mediate the effects of new learning, an episodic and a semantic one.

Characteristics of associative learning in younger and older adults: evidence from an episodic priming paradigm.

Two experiments investigated age differences in the encoding of associative information during a speeded naming task. In both experiments, semantically unrelated prime-target word pairs were presented 4 times, in either massed or spaced fashion, during the learning phase. An immediate or delayed test trial was presented following the fourth presentation. In Experiment 1, participants named both the primes and the targets. Younger and older adults showed similar benefits when naming targets that were part of a consistent prime-target pairing compared with targets presented with different primes at each presentation. In Experiment 2, participants named only the target word. Younger adults showed a benefit for consistently paired words, whereas older adults showed no benefit for consistently paired words. The results of the test trials showed a greater benefit for massed repeated words than for spaced repeated words at the immediate test and a reversed pattern at the delayed test. This spacing by test delay interaction was evident in response latency in Experiment 1 and in cued recall performance in Experiment 2.

Characteristics of associative learning in younger and older adults: Evidence from an episodic priming paradigm.

Characteristics of associative learning in younger and older adults: Evidence from an episodic priming paradigm.

A dissociation in the effects of study modality on tests of implicit and explicit memory.

Three experiments investigated variables affecting explicit and implicit memory for study modality. Explicit memory for modality was compared with implicit memory for modality (modality-specific priming) following the study manipulation of modality and level of processing. Explicit recall of modality showed the same pattern of dissociations that has been observed between other measures of episodic memory and priming measures of memory. Manipulations of meaning at study that facilitated recognition and fragment-cued recall increased the accuracy of modality recall, but had no effect on primed fragment-completion performance. In contrast, changing modality between study and test affected fragment-cued performance, but had no effect on recognition or on modality recall. Successive tests of fragment-cued recall and modality recall were found to be highly dependent, whereas successive tests of fragment-completion and modality recall were essentially independent. The results are interpreted as evidence that (1) factors relevant to episodic memory of modality are unrelated to factors that produce modality-specific priming and (2) episodic memory for incidental attributes of an episode, such as modality of study, interacts with and is dependent upon memory for the episode as a whole.

Recognition Priming Effects Following Serial Learning: Implications for Episodic Priming Effects

Experiment 1 found that recognition of an item could be facilitated if it were preceded on the recognition list by the item that preceded it during learning. Experiment 2 showed that this priming effect depended on evidence that the prime could elicit the target during learning. These results are interpreted by elaborating on the perspective of episodic memory as a record of encoding processes. Items encoded as part of the same cognitive episode are said to be stored within the same representation. Later recognition priming is possible when the target and prime are both encoded within the same episode. This framework is then extended to episodic tasks in general, and in particular to recognition priming effects that are observed after map learning.

Effect of Prime and Target Repetition on Lexical Decision Time

On a prime-target lexical decision task we manipulated the relatedness between prime and target (semantically related or unrelated), the number of repetitions (from 1 to 5), the type of the repeated stimulus (only the prime, only the target, or both), and the stimulus onset asynchrony (within a range of automatic activation from 60 to 400 msec.) to find whether semantic and repetition priming are additive (or interact), and whether there is episodic priming in an automatic, nonconscious way. Analysis showed repetition and semantic priming were additive rather than interactive. No episodic automatic priming was found. Results are discussed in terms of the predictions made from the main theoretical positions about the repetition effect.

Episodic priming in children with learning disabilities

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that children with learning disabilities experience greater difficulty than nondisabled children in their attempts to learn new associations (e.g., Lorsbach & Worman, 1988). The present experiment used a traditional cued recall task, as well as an item recognition priming paradigm (Ratcliff & McKoon, 1978), to obtain information about the locus of associative memory difficulties in learning disabled children. Consistent with earlier studies, learning disabled children were found to experience greater difficulty than nondisabled children when tested with a cued recall task. In contrast, the results of the item recognition priming task indicated that recently studied associations produced equal amounts of priming in learning disabled and nondisabled children. On the basis of the results of these two measures of associative memory, it was argued that learning disabled children had formed recently studied associations, despite their inability to consciously bring them back to mind on an episodic memory task. Results were discussed within the explicit and implicit memory framework of Graf and Schacter (1985).