Influence Of Priming Research Articles

On the psychology of environmental preferences: The influence of contextual priming on discrete choice experiments.

This paper addresses an important gap in discrete choice experiments literature regarding the effect of contextual priming on preferences and willingness to pay. Contextual priming arises when the mere context in which a survey takes place-whether interviewees are approached in areas related or unrelated to the target issue under evaluation-can sway stated choices. We found priming to have a significant effect on one of the analyzed attributes associated with managing a natural park. We recommend interviewing participants in locations that are neutral with respect to the attributes under investigation. This procedure would prevent researchers from communicating incorrect recommendations to policymakers, natural resource planners, and managers.

Effects of Homophone Priming on the Decision-Making in Perceptual Color Recognition of Mandarin Speakers

This study delves into the nuanced interactions between language, cognition, and perception by examining the impact of homophones on decision-making and perceptual color recognition among native Mandarin speakers. Drawing on theories of linguistic relativity and cognitive processing, this research hypothesized that homophonic primes would subtly influence both decision-making processes and color recognition tasks. Participants were assigned at random to surveys where they were unknowingly exposed to stimuli with and without homophonic primes before engaging in color recognition tasks involving subtle shade differentiations. Contrary to initial expectations, statistical analysis revealed no significant differences in decision-making accuracy between conditions, suggesting that homophones may not overtly affect conscious decision-making processes in our bilingual cohort. However, intriguing variations emerged in the perceptual color recognition task, where participants exposed to homophonic primes showed tendencies to perceive color shades more similarly compared to those in the control condition. This finding implies a potential cognitive load effect or subtle priming influence on perceptual categorization tied to linguistic structures. The implications of these findings challenge traditional views on language's role in shaping cognitive processes, highlighting the complexity of how linguistic structures such as homophones may operate at subconscious levels. The study contributes to ongoing debates in cognitive science and linguistics by underscoring the need for nuanced approaches to understanding cross-linguistic cognitive mechanisms. Future research should further explore the Whorfian hypothesis within bilingual contexts, considering additional variables such as language proficiency and cultural influences to elucidate the intricate relationship between language and cognition.

Influence of Priming on Seed Quality and Seed Health in Sorghum

Aims: To achieve sustainable agriculture, it is essential to conduct ongoing research aimed at reducing the reliance on chemical fertilizers. This study investigates the effectiveness of seed priming, either alone or in combination with low doses of fungicides and/or biocontrol agents, to enhance seed quality and to reduce seed infection by improving the rate and uniformity of seed emergence and overcoming diseases. Study Design: Completely randomized design. Place and Duration of Study: Seed Unit, UAS, Raichur, from March 2022 to September 2022. Methodology: Sorghum seeds were surface sterilized with sodium hypochlorite (1 %) for five minutes and then washed thrice with sterile water. Later the seeds were primed with Trichoderma hamatum, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, Paenibacillus polymyxa, Carboxin 37.5 % + thiram 37.5 % (vitavax power), Trichoderma harzianum, Azospirillium and control with the seed to solution ratio of 1:5 for eight hours and then the primed seeds were dried back to original moisture content (24 hrs.) and then used to assess the seed quality parameters. Results: Seed priming with Bacillus amyloliquefaciens resulted in statistically significant improvements in seed germination (95.0%), shoot length (16.9 cm), root length (16.6 cm), seedling length (33.5 cm), speed of germination (20.1), seedling dry weight (339.3 mg), seedling vigour index-I (3183), seedling vigour index-II (32234), lower electrical conductivity (0.35 dS/m) and reduced seed infection (0.6%). In contrast, the control group exhibited significantly lower seed germination (83.0%), shoot length (12.6 cm), root length (11.1 cm), seedling length (23.7 cm), speed of germination (15.2), seedling dry weight (333.2 mg), seedling vigour index-I (1967), seedling vigour index-II (27656), higher electrical conductivity (0.65 dS/m) and increased seed infection (6.8%). Conclusion: Sorghum seeds primed with Bacillus amyloliquefaciens increases the seed quality parameters and reduces seed infection, supporting its use as an effective strategy for enhancing seed performance and promoting sustainable agricultural practices.

Investigating the Effects of Repetitive Paired-Pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Visuomotor Training Using TMS-EEG

I-wave periodicity repetitive paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (iTMS) can modify acquisition of a novel motor skill, but the associated neurophysiological effects remain unclear. The current study therefore used combined TMS-electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) to investigate the neurophysiological effects of iTMS on subsequent visuomotor training (VT). Sixteen young adults (26.1 ± 5.1 years) participated in three sessions including real iTMS and VT (iTMS + VT), control iTMS and VT (iTMSControl + VT), or iTMS alone. Motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) and TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs) were measured before and after iTMS, and again after VT, to assess neuroplastic changes. Irrespective of the intervention, MEP amplitude was not changed after iTMS or VT. Motor skill was improved compared with baseline, but no differences were found between stimulus conditions. In contrast, the P30 peak was altered by VT when preceded by control iTMS (P < 0.05), but this effect was not apparent when VT was preceded by iTMS or following iTMS alone (all P > 0.15). In contrast to expectations, iTMS was unable to modulate MEP amplitude or influence motor learning. Despite this, changes in P30 amplitude suggested that motor learning was associated with altered cortical reactivity. Furthermore, this effect was abolished by priming with iTMS, suggesting an influence of priming that failed to impact learning.

Cognition and cultural mediation: The influence of semantic priming on the perception of a painting

Cognition and cultural mediation: The influence of semantic priming on the perception of a painting

Combined Use of Multiple Cloud‐Free Snow Cover Products in China and Its High‐Mountain Region: Implications From Snow Cover Identification to Snow Phenology Detection

AbstractAccurate snow phenology detection, including snow cover days (SCD), snow start date (SSD), and snow end date (SED), is increasingly important for understanding mountain hydrology such as snow heterogeneity and snowmelt seasonality. Multiple cloud‐free daily snow cover products have recently been developed in China, employing diverse retrieval algorithms and cloud‐gap‐filling methods, resulting in varying accuracy levels. However, comprehensive analysis of differences among products and their impact on snow phenology detection is lacking. This study systematically evaluates eight state‐of‐the‐art snow cover products in China, focusing on the challenging Tibetan Plateau (TP). We introduce a novel metric, the consistency‐weighted correlation coefficient (CWR), customized for SSD and SED detection, and propose product‐combining schemes like “ensemble voting” and “sensor preference” to enhance reliability. Our findings highlight the prime influence of retrieval algorithms under clear‐sky conditions on accuracy, surpassing the importance of cloud‐gap‐filling methods. Specifically, a product optimizing normalized difference snow index thresholds for diverse landcover types consistently outperforms others in detecting all three snow phenology parameters, with correlation coefficients for SCD of 0.82 and 0.69, and CWR values for SSD of 0.54 and 0.40, and for SED of 0.53 and 0.37 in both China and the TP, respectively. Moreover, our proposed scheme combining three high‐accuracy products significantly enhances snow cover identification and SCD detection, especially when the best‐performing product alone faces substantial uncertainty. These findings provide immediate, crucial implications for optimizing the use of multiple cloud‐free products to enhance snow phenology detection, ultimately advancing the applicability of derived snow parameters in mountain hydrology research.

Betting on Your Feelings: The Interplay between Emotion and Cognition in Gambling Affective Task.

Background: Gambling Disorder (GD) is a bio-psycho-social disorder resulting from the interaction of clinical, cognitive, and affective factors. Impulsivity is a crucial factor in addiction studies, as it is closely linked to cognitive distortions in GD by encompassing impulsive choices, motor responses, decision-making, and cognitive biases. Also, emotions, mood, temperament, and affective state are crucial in developing and maintaining GD. Gambling can be used as a maladaptive coping strategy to avoid or escape problems and distress. Methods: The aim of the present study is to explore differences in personality traits and emotion regulation of people suffering from GD, substance-dependent gamblers (SDGs), and healthy controls (HCs). Additionally, the study proposes a new experimental task: the "Gambling Affective Task" (GAT) to investigate the influence of affective priming on risk-taking behaviors. Results: Our findings indicate that participants placed lower bets following positive priming. Additionally, SDGs wagered significantly higher amounts than HCs, regardless of priming type. In general, participants exhibited longer response times after positive priming trials, compared to negative and neutral priming trials. These findings suggest that experiencing positive emotions can act as a protective factor by delaying and lengthening gambling behaviors. By comparing gamblers with and without substance comorbidity, we can gain insight into the exclusive factors of GD and improve our understanding of this disorder. Conclusions: By elucidating the impact of emotional states on risk-taking, the research also provides new insights into the prevention and treatment of GD.

Priming users with babies’ gestures: Investigating the influences of priming with different development origin of image schemas in gesture elicitation study

Gesture elicitation study is an effective method to design gestures for various contexts. Through involving end-users, GES results in intuitive gestures because they directly reflect end-users’ mental models and preferences. However, limited by personal experience, end-users are not capable of taking full advantages of technology while proposing gestures, which is referred as legacy bias. To overcome this, previous studies demonstrate that users’ performance can be improved by priming, such as viewing gestures, watching fictional movies, and experiencing framed scenarios. This research extends this line of studies by considering the developmental origin of image schemas in priming. More specifically, we compared the influences of no-priming, priming with early image schemas (EIS), and priming with late image schemas (LIS) on GES. Controlled experiments were conducted (N = 120) along the three stages of GES: users’ generation of gestures (Experiment 1), final gesture sets (Experiment 2), and end-users’ learnability of gestures (Experiment 3). Results show that users are largely influenced by developmental origin of image schemas in priming. LIS-priming improve gesture proposal production in comparison to no-priming condition. As for end-users’ evaluation, EIS-priming gestures exhibit higher initial and overall learnability.

Drought priming enhances wheat grain starch and protein quality under drought stress during grain filling

The impact of drought stress on crop yield and quality is substantial. Drought priming during the early growth stage of plants has been shown to improve tolerance to drought stress during the reproductive stage, although its effects on grain quality remains elusive. This study aimed to investigate the influence of drought priming on starch and protein levels in grains under drought stress during grain filling. Our results reveal that drought stress results in a reduction in starch content and its constituents, while simultaneously increasing glutenin macropolymers and protein fractons. Notably, drought primed plants under drought stress (PD) exhibit mitigated declines in starch content and its components, leading to improvements in starch swelling power and pasting properties. Additionally, PD results in a slight increase in protein fractions, limiting the overall rise in total protein content compared to drought stress alone. Collectively, our study underscores the efficacyof drought priming as a strategy to counteract the negative effects of drought stress on grain quality, particularly by minimizing starch losses and restraining protein content elevation.

Prime-induced illusion of control: The influence of unconscious priming on self-initiated actions and the role of regression to the mean

To what degree human cognition is influenced by subliminal stimuli is a controversial empirical question. One striking example was reported by Linser and Goschke (2007): participants overestimated how much control they had over objectively uncontrollable stimuli when masked congruent primes were presented immediately before the action. Critically, however, unawareness of the masked primes was established by post hoc data selection. In our preregistered study we sought to explore these findings while adjusting prime visibility based on individual thresholds, so that each participant underwent both visible and non-visible conditions. In experiment 1, N = 39 participants engaged in a control judgement task: following the presentation of a semantic prime, they freely selected between two keys, which triggered the appearance of a colored circle. The color of the circles, however, was independent of the key-press. Subsequently, participants assessed their perceived control over the circle’s color, based on their key-presses, via a rating scale that ranged from 0 % (no control) to 100 % (complete control). Contrary to Linser and Goschke (2007)'s findings, this experiment demonstrated that predictive information influenced the experience of agency only when primes were consciously processed. In experiment 2, utilizing symbolic (arrow) primes, N = 35 participants had to rate their feeling of control over the effect-stimulus’ identity during a two-choice identification paradigm (i.e., they were instructed to press a key corresponding to a target stimulus; with a contingency between target and effect stimulus of 75 %/25 %). The results revealed no significant influence of subliminal priming on agency perceptions. In summary, this study implies that unconscious stimuli may not exert a substantial influence on the conscious experience of agency, underscoring the need for careful consideration of methodological aspects and experimental design's impact on observed phenomena.

Organisation, information processing, and policy change in US federal bureaucracies

We examine the shape of policy change in the US federal bureaucracy. Punctuated equilibrium suggests institutional friction and limited attention as prime influences on policy change. We build on this literature by exploring how organisational forms shape policy change. We also conceptualise the key difference between budgets and laws as measures and use this distinction to motivate our new approach to modelling the shape of policy change. We use the considerable organisational variation in the US federal bureaucracy as the empirical foundation for the analysis, collecting a new data set on the regulatory agenda containing 63,289 items from 2008 to 2016. We use an innovative points-over-threshold approach to show how to move from typical descriptive analysis of policy change distributions to models of tail behaviour. This approach is more amenable to textual data than previous approaches based on percentage change distributions. The findings suggest that departmental bureaucracies, independent boards and commissions, and government corporations experience different patterns of policy change. We relate organisation and delegation to adaptability and resiliency in institutional and policy-system design. Larger organisations exhibit smoother, less disjointed policy dynamics, while smaller organisational forms exhibit fatter tails and less adaptive policy change. Our findings suggest that larger bureaucracies may handle change in task environments and problem definitions more easily than smaller organisations. The findings challenge the typical view that smaller, nimble organisations handle change better.

Mathematical problem solving is modulated by word priming.

This study aimed to explore the influence of word priming on mathematical problem solving. In two experiments, participants were required to finish multiplication estimation tasks with a specified estimation strategy under different word priming conditions (Experiment 1: concrete words vs. Experiment 2: abstract words). The results showed that: (1) under the concrete word priming condition, in comparison to neutral, positive word priming improved accuracies (ACCs) when using a down-up strategy (e.g., doing 40 × 80 = 3200 for 43 × 78), while both positive and negative word priming reduced reaction time (RT); (2) under the abstract word priming condition, both positive and negative (vs. neutral) abstract word priming reduced RTs, while individuals' ACCs of completing the estimation task were not influenced by valence. The present study showed that whether concrete words or abstract words were adopted as experimental stimuli, participants' performance of completing mathematical problems was modulated by the valence of the priming word, which led us to develop a better understanding of how arithmetic performance is influenced by word processing.

Unutargrupna pristranost / In-Group Bias

Religion represents a system of beliefs, understandings, and actions from which religious individuals draw an array of values for their judgments of the world. Religiousness is a multidimensional construct comprising a multitude of religious orientations of which extrinsic and intrinsic religiousness are the most prominent in scientific literature. Also, in the social psychological domain, religion represents a social group whose members show a tendency toward in-group bias, a phenomenon basically immanent in every social group. The construct of in-group favoritism refers to a tendency of favoring one’s in-group members over out-group members. The focus of this paper is oriented on the basic dimensions of religiousness and their behavioral manifestations such as in-group favoritism, prejudice, biases in prosocial behavior, etc. Based on scientific literature, the aim of this paper is to determine the relations between religiousness and in-group bias, i.e., favoring the in-group and derogation of the out-group. An additional aim is to demonstrate the importance of the influence of religious priming on the social behavior of an individual in terms of making or breaking in-group biases and out-group prejudices.

The role of primed and non-primed MSC-derived conditioned media in neuroregeneration.

With growing significance in nervous system repair, mesenchymal stem cell-derived conditioned media (MSCCM) have been used in cell-free therapies in regenerative medicine. However, the immunomodulatory and neuroregenerative effects of MSCCM and the influence of priming on these effects are still poorly understood. In this study, by various methods focused on cell viability, proliferation, neuron-like differentiation, neurite outgrowth, cell migration and regrowth, we demonstrated that MSCCM derived from adipose tissue (AT-MSCCM) and amniotic membrane (AM-MSCCM) had different effects on SH-SY5Y cells. AT-MSCCM was found to have a higher proliferative capacity and the ability to impact neurite outgrowth during differentiation, while AM-MSCCM showed more pronounced immunomodulatory activity, migration, and re-growth of SH-SY5Y cells in the scratch model. Furthermore, priming of MSC with pro-inflammatory cytokine (IFN-γ) resulted in different proteomic profiles of conditioned media from both sources, which had the highest effect on SH-SY5Y proliferation and neurite outgrowth in terms of the length of neurites (pAT-MSCCM) compared to the control group (DMEM). Altogether, our results highlight the potential of primed and non-primed MSCCM as a therapeutic tool for neurodegenerative diseases, although some differences must be considered.

Can we change automatic processes: the influence of social priming on alcohol attentional bias.

The Stroop Effect has been linked to social concept priming, suggesting that the latter may trigger automatic behaviour aligned with the primed concept. This study examined the effects of social priming on alcohol attentional bias, with a sample of mostly light drinkers; it used a social priming task and an alcohol-Stroop test to measure participants' response times (RTs) before and after they had been socially primed. Participants were separated into one of three social priming conditions: Neutral, Alcohol Addiction, and Alcohol Preoccupation. A mixed ANOVA was run to determine whether participants' RTs to alcohol-related stimuli, "rather than to neutral sitmuli," slowed significantly after the alcohol interference tasks, relative to the neutral interference task, suggesting an alcohol attentional bias had been induced by the social priming exercise. Key interaction terms did not reveal such an interaction, but rather a general slowing down (for both neutral and alcohol stimuli), in the Alcohol conditions, relative to the Neutral one. As a result, we can conclude that while we did not induce an alcohol-specific bias in participants, we did discover a generalised interference effect, following alcohol-related social priming tasks.

Reproductive toxicity of bisphenol A, at environmentally relevant concentrations, on ovarian redox balance, maturational response, and intra-oocyte signalling events in Labeo bata

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a widely used plastic monomer that potentially interferes with ovarian neuroendocrine, endocrine, and autocrine/paracrine factors, causing reproductive dysfunction. However, the influence of BPA on redox balance, estrogen receptor (ER) expression vis-à-vis meiotic cell cycle progression, and intra-oocyte signalling events has not been extensively investigated. The present study examines the impact of BPA on reproductive toxicity in female Labeo bata (Order Cypriniformes, Family Cyprinidae), a freshwater teleost preferred as a food fish in the Indian subcontinent. Our results show that while ovarian weight (gonadosomatic index, GSI) and dynamics of follicular growth undergo pronounced changes during the annual reproductive cycle, chronic BPA exposure at environmentally relevant concentrations promotes follicular atresia concomitant with reduced GSI during the spawning phase, the highest response being observed due to low-dose (0.1 μg/L, 0.438 nM) BPA exposure in vivo. Furthermore, BPA perturbation of ovarian StAR expression and ERα/ERβ homeostasis corroborates with elevated oxidative stress in BPA-treated ovary, FG follicles, and follicular cells. A sharp increase in ROS accumulation and nitric oxide (NO) levels in BPA-treated full-grown (FG) follicles coupled with loss of redox balance, elevated follicular cell death, and activation of apoptotic markers (caspase -8, -9, -3, Bax) indicate poor oocyte health and reproductive toxicity. Importantly, maturational steroid (MIS, 17,20β-P)-induced cyclin B-p34cdc2 activation and elevated GVBD (germinal vesicle breakdown) response require protein kinase A (PKA) inhibition and participation of Mos/MAPK- and cdc25-mediated signalling events. While the adenylate cyclase activator forskolin (FK) abrogates, priming with a PKA inhibitor (H89) promotes the meiotic G2-M1 transition, confirming the role of PKA in meiotic cell cycle progression in this species. Furthermore, the negative influence of BPA priming on 17,20β-P-induced oocyte maturation involves elevated PKAc phosphorylation (activation) and significant alteration in Mos/MAPK signalling, indicating derailed meiotic maturational competence and disrupted oocyte quality.

Forecasting the strength characteristics of concrete incorporating waste foundry sand using advance machine algorithms including deep learning

The incorporation of waste foundry sand (WFS) into concrete has been recognized as a sustainable approach to improve the strength properties of waste foundry sand concrete (WFSC). However, machine learning (ML) techniques are still necessary to forecast the characteristics of WFSC and evaluate the dominant input features for the suitable mix design. For this purpose, the present work selected five ML-based techniques based on gene expression programming (GEP), deep neural network (DNN), and optimizable Gaussian process regressor (OGPR) to predict the mechanical characteristics of WFSC. To build up the predictive models, a database containing 397 values of compressive strength (CS) and 169 values of flexural strength (FS) is collected from published literature. The models' performance was evaluated via various statistical metrics and additionally, external validation criteria were employed to validate the developed models. Furthermore, the Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) was carried out to interpret the model's prediction. The DNN2 model exhibited superior performance, with R-values of 0.996 (training), 0.999 (testing), and 0.997 (validation) for the compressive strength estimation. In contrast, the GEP2 model showed poor accuracy in estimating the CS compared to other developed models, with R-values of 0.851, 0.901, and 0.844 for the training, testing, and validation sets, respectively. Similarly, for the flexural strength estimation, the DNN2 model provided R-values of 0.999 for training, 0.996 for testing, and 0.999 for validation sets, indicating its robust performance. The SHAP analysis revealed that the age, water-cement ratio, and coarse aggregate-to-cement ratio have the prime influence in determining flexural and compressive strength, respectively. The comparison of the models provided that the DNN2 model accurately estimated the output with high accuracy and lower error values and might be utilized in practical fields to reduce labor and cost by optimizing the mix combinations. Finally, for future studies, it is recommended to utilize ensemble and hybrid algorithms, as well as post-hoc explanatory techniques, to forecast the characteristics of WFSC accurately.

No influence of regular rhythmic priming on grammaticality judgment and sentence comprehension in English-speaking children

A growing body of research has demonstrated the association between music and language, particularly between rhythm and grammar skills in children. A compelling piece of evidence for the influence of music on language comes from findings that a brief exposure to regular musical rhythm improved subsequent syntactic language performance in children. Nevertheless, those observations were made on one particular task, i.e., grammaticality judgment, mostly with French-speaking children. Here, we sought to corroborate and extend the rhythmic priming effect with English-speaking children aged 7 to 12 years who underwent two different syntactic tasks on spoken sentences: one involving judgment on morphosyntactic well-formedness (grammaticality judgment) and the other requiring noun–verb relation analysis (sentence comprehension), both following either regular or irregular rhythmic priming. Half of the children were administered synthetic speech stimuli (Experiment 1), and the other half were presented with natural speech (Experiment 2). Across the two experiments, we did not find any rhythmic priming effect; children’s performance on both the grammaticality judgment and sentence comprehension tasks was comparable irrespective of the regularity in prior rhythms. These results imply that the positive influence of regular rhythmic priming on syntactic processing may be confined to specific language or age populations, warranting further investigation.

Phosphorus priming influence on different quality of wheat cv. “Pardela” and “Gralha Azul” seeds

The seed priming allows the beginning of the metabolic processes necessary for the germination. Phosphorus is a macronutrient necessary for the growth and development of seedlings, since it participates in the structural components cell like the nucleic acid molecules. The objective was to evaluate the effect of priming and priming with phosphorus (P) on the physiological quality of wheat seeds with different levels of vigor. For the experiment, three lots of wheat seeds of Pardela cultivar, with different levels of vigor i.e. high, medium and low were used. The effect of priming with water and priming with different potential levels of phosphorus was evaluated: 0 (control), 0.10 %, 0.20 %, 0.30 %, 0.40 % and 0.50 % P. The first germination count, percentage of germination, abnormal seedlings, root and shoot length, and dry mass of the seedlings were determined. For the priming with water, the data were submitted to analysis of variance and the means compared by the Tukey test. In the study of the effect of the different concentrations of phosphorus, a variance and regression analysis was carried out, following the completely randomized design, in a factorial scheme 3x6. The Priming in water had significantly influenced all treatments, independently of the seeds vigor levels, increases in the percentage of normal seedlings obtained in the first count and also in the percentage of germination of the low and medium vigor lots, and the seedlings primed in water had significantly larger shoot length in the three different lots. Regarding the different concentrations of phosphorus, significant differences were observed only in the first count of the germination, which decreased with the increase of the phosphorus concentration and the length of the aerial part, which presented an inverse behavior, increasing with the highest levels of phosphorus. Significant interaction between the different vigor levels and phosphorus concentrations was observed only for the root length variable, where concave, linear and convex trends were observed for the high, low and medium vigor lots, respectively. Phosphorus solutions had the optimum role as priming source in promoting seed emergence and root development irrespective of quality seeds

Autobiographical memory specificity and restrained eating: examining the influence of priming with images of healthy and unhealthy foods

BackgroundDietary restraint has been linked to deficits in the ability to recall detailed memories of personally experienced events (referred to as autobiographical memory specificity). As priming with healthy foods increases the salience of restraint it would be expected to lead to greater deficits in memory specificity.ObjectiveTo determine if priming word cues with images of healthy or unhealthy foods would influence the specificity of memory retrieval, and if deficits in memory specificity would be more evident in those reporting higher levels of dietary restraint, or currently dieting.MethodsSixty female undergraduates self-reported if they were currently dieting and completed measures of mood, restraint, and disinhibition, and a modified version of the autobiographical memory task. Participants were presented with positive and negative words (unrelated to eating concerns) and asked to retrieve a specific memory in response to each cue. A food image was shown prior to each word cue; half of the participants were primed with images of healthy foods and half with images of unhealthy foods.ResultsAs expected, participants primed with healthy foods retrieved fewer specific memories than did those primed with unhealthy foods. However, neither restraint nor current dieting behaviour was associated with memory specificity.ConclusionsDifferences in memory specificity between the priming conditions cannot be explained in terms of increased salience of restraint. However, it is plausible that unhealthy images led to an increase in positive affect, which in turn improved memory specificity.Level of evidenceLevel I: Evidence obtained from: at least one properly designed experimental study.