Location-based Negative Priming Research Articles

Frequent cannabis use is associated with reduced negative priming among females.

This study examined the relationship between cannabis use, sex, and attentional inhibition in a sample of 325 young Australians (194 women and 131 men) aged 14 to 24 years. Participants completed an online assessment, which included self-report measures of alcohol and other drug use, psychological distress, schizotypy, and location-based negative priming. Participants who had never used cannabis (n = 163) were compared with occasional (n = 118) and frequent (n = 44) cannabis users, with frequent use being defined as having used cannabis at least weekly in the past 6 months. There was a significant interaction between sex and cannabis use, with follow-up analyses indicating that frequent cannabis use was associated with reduced negative priming among females only. This study highlights the role of sex in influencing how cannabis use interacts with cognition and suggests that females who use cannabis frequently may be more likely than males to exhibit deficits in attentional inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record

An epidemiological test of the Kandel–Kandel hypothesis of Sept. 2014: U.S. 2002–13

Aims: As the association between cannabis use and psychosis becomes more clear, especially in adolescence, this study aims to explore how cannabis use interacts with age to influence negative priming in adolescents and young adults. Methods: A sample of n=124 young people (aged 15–24) participated in this experiment to examine the effects of cannabis use and schizotypy on location-based negative priming, and explore whether the effects of cannabis use on negative priming vary according to age. The experiment was run over the Internet. Participants completed a number of measures of substance use, an inventory of feelings and experiences and 24 negative priming trials. Results: Participants had a mean age of 20.3 years (SD 2.5) and 58% were female. Across all participants there was on average a slowed responding to probedisplays of negative priming compared with controls (p< .001). The schizotypy dimension of Impulsive Nonconformity was found to have a significant effect on negative priming. Further, there was a significant age by cannabis use interaction indicating that younger, frequent users of cannabis may be more susceptible to its effects on attentional inhibition andperhaps at greater risk of developing a disorder on the psychosis dimension. Conclusions: Higher scores on the Impulsive Nonconformity dimension of schizotypy were related to reduced negative priming, suggesting that more impulsive participants show greater deficits in cognitive control and cannabis use interacting with age to influence negative priming, implying that the effectiveness of inhibitory cognitive control processes was impaired in younger cannabis users compared with older cannabis users if they used cannabis frequently. Longitudinal research examining changes in negative priming over time among frequent adolescent cannabis users would be useful to determine the factors involved in the maintenance, as opposed to improvement in, changes in priming with age. Financial support: NCPIC is supported by the Australian Government Department of Health.

Cannabis use, schizotypy, and negative priming

The present study examined the effects of frequency of cannabis use, schizotypy, and age on cognitive control, as measured using a location-based negative priming task in a sample of 124 Australians aged 15–24 who had ever used cannabis. This study found that the schizotypy dimension of Impulsive Nonconformity had a significant effect on negative priming such that participants with higher scores on this dimension showed reduced negative priming. Also, higher levels of psychological distress were associated with greater negative priming. Finally, there was a significant age by cannabis use interaction indicating that younger, frequent users of cannabis may be more susceptible to its effects on cognitive control and perhaps at greater risk of developing a disorder on the psychosis dimension.

Working memory loads affect location-based negative priming differently than inhibition of return

Although some experimental research suggests that location-based negative priming (L-NP; slowed responding to stimuli presented at previously ignored locations) and inhibition of return (IOR; slowed responding to stimuli presented at previously attended locations) are caused by a common underlying mechanism, there is reason to doubt this claim. Evidence for this is briefly reviewed and four experiments are reported where L-NP and IOR are examined under different memory load conditions. We found that L-NP remained intact under a visual-spatial and verbal memory load (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) in accordance with predictions, but a visual-spatial memory load eliminated IOR (Experiment 3). These data support claims that IOR is dependent on visual-spatial memory and are the first to establish that L-NP, unlike identity-based negative priming (I-NP), is not reduced with a memory load. These data bolster claims that at least one of the processes that contribute to L-NP differs from the processes that produce IOR.

Altered negative priming in older subjects: first evidence from behavioral and neural level

The impact of aging on the negative priming (NP) effect has been subject of many studies using behavioral measures. Results are inconsistent and corresponding neural data do not exist. We were interested in, whether or not processing of NP is altered in older in comparison to young adults (YA) on behavioral and neural level. Eighteen young and eighteen older healthy adults performed a location-based NP paradigm during fMRI. YA behaviorally showed a NP effect and NP associated fronto-striatal activation, which is in accordance with the inhibitory model of NP. In older subjects no significant behavioral NP effect and no NP-related activation in predefined brain regions could be found. This is discussed in context of the “loss of efficiency” hypothesis. One possible source for the lack of NP-related activation is a reduction of gray matter (GM) volume in older subjects as shown using voxel based morphometry (VBM).

An fMRI investigation into the neural mechanisms of spatial attentional selection in a location-based negative priming task

Selective attention enables us to respond to objects and events that are relevant to our goals for adaptive interactions with the environment. Despite evidence from research addressing the selection of a target location, little is known about the neural mechanisms of attentional selection in situations in which the selection is biased in favor of the information in the irrelevant location. In this study, we combined event-related fMRI and a location-based negative priming paradigm with a prime–probe-trial design to investigate the neural mechanisms of spatial attentional selection. Participants were instructed to respond to the location of a pre-specified target while ignoring a distractor at an irrelevant location. The goal of this study was twofold. First, we identified brain regions that are linked to conflict resolution situations, in which the selection bias puts the irrelevant information in the probe trial on a selection advantage over the target. Second, we determined the mechanism of conflict resolution when the encoding conditions of stimuli are manipulated by presenting stimuli either abruptly (onset) or masked (no-onset). The results showed that the bottom-up-induced competition among stimuli in the target selection is stronger for onset than no-onset stimuli. The superior parietal lobule was sensitive to those changes in bottom-up-induced competition. Furthermore, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobe were activated to resolve the additional processing effort necessary to select the negatively biased target. In conclusion, the present study identified dissociable neural components needed to resolve the negative selection bias, which attentional modulation can be addressed in future studies by examining changes in the functional connectivity.

The control of visual attention and its influence on prioritized processing in a location negative priming paradigm

In a location-based negative priming paradigm, the possibility of a disengagement option of the underlying inhibitory mechanism was tested. Whereas in previous studies disengagement was observed when providing utility information about the probe trial structure, in the present study the allocation of visual attention to the stimuli was manipulated. In the first step an automatic deployment of visual attention was implemented by presenting all stimuli as abrupt onsets (Experiment 1), which demonstrated commonly observed negative priming effects. In further conditions of non-automatic allocation of visual attention in which target and distractor were presented as no-onset stimuli, negative priming effects were eliminated (Experiments 2 and 3). The preferred interpretation is that in conditions of automatic control of attention, target and distractor compete for control of action. A non-automatic control of visual attention, on the other hand, leads to a top-down modulated selection, which results in prioritized target encoding and a loss of distractor impact on the selection process. Alternative accounts and the role of no-onset distractor processing were investigated in Experiment 4.

The Influence of Distractor-Only Prime Trials on the Location Negative Priming Mechanism

The Influence of Distractor-Only Prime Trials on the Location Negative Priming Mechanism

Disengaging the negative priming mechanism in location tasks

In a location-based negative priming task, targets that appear at locations that were previously occupied by distractors are typically responded to more slowly than are targets that appear at formerly unoccupied positions. In the present study, we attempted to disengage the location-based negative priming mechanism by presenting visual cues indicating the most likely location of the upcoming target. The first experiment showed that 75% cue-target validity was not sufficient to affect the negative priming mechanism. However, the second experiment demonstrated that a much reduced, but not eliminated, negative priming effect occurred with 100%cue-target validity. These findings are similar to those found with inhibition of return, suggesting that location-based inhibition of return effects and location-based negative priming effects may share a common inhibition mechanism.

Negative priming for spatial location?

The term negative priming has been used to describe the deleterious consequences for performance when the current target shares properties with an ignored distractor from the previous trial. Location-based negative priming was first reported by Tipper, Brehaut, and Driver (1990) who used a prime-probe procedure wherein the task was to localize targets defined by their identity (shape). Design imbalances in this seminal study, and others, are illustrated and it is indicated how these might have contaminated the reported effects. The findings, from three experiments using an unbiased design, suggest that negative priming in the spatial location procedure may be more closely related to inhibition of return (IOR), or to the automatic attraction of attention by new objects, than to the concepts of distractor inhibition, episodic retrieval, and feature mismatch, which have traditionally been used to explain negative priming for spatial location.