Long-term Priming Research Articles

Are Prosodic Variants Stored in the French Mental Lexicon?

A long-term priming experiment examined the way stress information is processed and represented in French speakers' mind. Repeated prime and target words either matched (/bã'do/ - /bã'do/ "headband") or mismatched their stress pattern (/bãdo/ - /bã'do/). In comparison to a control condition (/maʁ[Formula: see text]/ - /bã'do/), the results showed that matching and mismatching primes were equally effective in facilitating the processing of the target words. Thus, despite the fact that French speakers routinely produce and hear words in their stressed and unstressed versions, this study suggests that stress in French is not integrated into lexical representations.

Phoneme-Order Encoding During Spoken Word Recognition: A Priming Investigation.

In three experiments, we examined priming effects where primes were formed by transposing the first and last phoneme of tri-phonemic target words (e.g., /byt/ as a prime for /tyb/). Auditory lexical decisions were found not to be sensitive to this transposed-phoneme priming manipulation in long-term priming (Experiment 1), with primes and targets presented in two separated blocks of stimuli and with unrelated primes used as control condition (/mul/-/tyb/), while a long-term repetition priming effect was observed (/tyb/-/tyb/). However, a clear transposed-phoneme priming effect was found in two short-term priming experiments (Experiments 2 and 3), with primes and targets presented in close temporal succession. The transposed-phoneme priming effect was found when unrelated prime-target pairs (/mul/-/tyb/) were used as control and more important when prime-target pairs sharing the medial vowel (/pys/-/tyb/) served as control condition, thus indicating that the effect is not due to vocalic overlap. Finally, in Experiment 3, a transposed-phoneme priming effect was found when primes sharing the medial vowel plus one consonant in an incorrect position with the targets (/byl/-/tyb/) served as control condition, and this condition did not differ significantly from the vowel-only condition. Altogether, these results provide further evidence for a role for position-independent phonemes in spoken word recognition, such that a phoneme at a given position in a word also provides evidence for the presence of words that contain that phoneme at a different position.

Quantitative analysis of the sHLA-G protein in seminal plasma.

Recent studies revealed that maternal and embryonic contributions impact on HLA-G protein expression and might contribute to pregnancy success or failure. The main objective of this study was to examine the paternal levels of the immunoregulatory soluble human leukocyte antigen-G (sHLA-G) protein in seminal plasma and testicular biopsy samples during artificial reproductive technique (ART) treatment and to investigate possible correlations with other semen parameters, age, and pregnancy outcome of the female partner. Soluble HLA-G levels of 106 seminal plasma samples and eight testicular biopsy samples were determined using a commercial sHLA-G Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit. We observed a significant negative correlation of male age with total sHLA-G amount (P0.023, R-0.221) and semen volume (P=0.047, R-0.193). Testicular biopsy samples were analyzed and tested positively with sHLA-G ELISA. Levels of sHLA-G in seminal plasma samples from men with normozoospermia did not deviate significantly from those with reduced semen quality. No significant difference of sHLA-G levels in seminal plasma and pregnancy outcome of the female partner was detected. Our data showed that age of men with normozoospermia was significantly lower when the female partner conceived after ART treatment (P=0.016, Mann-Whitney U test). High sHLA-G levels in seminal plasma of the male partner appear not to be required for pregnancy but might contribute among other factors to the success of establishing and maintaining pregnancy through long-term priming of the female uterine milieu.

Towards a distributed connectionist account of cognates and interlingual homographs: evidence from semantic relatedness tasks.

BackgroundCurrent models of how bilinguals process cognates (e.g., “wolf”, which has the same meaning in Dutch and English) and interlingual homographs (e.g., “angel”, meaning “insect’s sting” in Dutch) are based primarily on data from lexical decision tasks. A major drawback of such tasks is that it is difficult—if not impossible—to separate processes that occur during decision making (e.g., response competition) from processes that take place in the lexicon (e.g., lateral inhibition). Instead, we conducted two English semantic relatedness judgement experiments.MethodsIn Experiment 1, highly proficient Dutch–English bilinguals (N = 29) and English monolinguals (N = 30) judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs that included a cognate (e.g., “wolf”–“howl”; n = 50), an interlingual homograph (e.g., “angel”–“heaven”; n = 50) or an English control word (e.g., “carrot”–“vegetable”; n = 50). In Experiment 2, another group of highly proficient Dutch–English bilinguals (N = 101) read sentences in Dutch that contained one of those cognates, interlingual homographs or the Dutch translation of one of the English control words (e.g., “wortel” for “carrot”) approximately 15 minutes prior to completing the English semantic relatedness task.ResultsIn Experiment 1, there was an interlingual homograph inhibition effect of 39 ms only for the bilinguals, but no evidence for a cognate facilitation effect. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and also revealed that cross-lingual long-term priming had an opposite effect on the cognates and interlingual homographs: recent experience with a cognate in Dutch speeded processing of those items 15 minutes later in English but slowed processing of interlingual homographs. However, these priming effects were smaller than previously observed using a lexical decision task.ConclusionAfter comparing our results to studies in both the bilingual and monolingual domain, we argue that bilinguals appear to process cognates and interlingual homographs as monolinguals process polysemes and homonyms, respectively. In the monolingual domain, processing of such words is best modelled using distributed connectionist frameworks. We conclude that it is necessary to explore the viability of such a model for the bilingual case.Data, scripts, materials and pre-registrations.Experiment 1: http://www.osf.io/ndb7p; Experiment 2: http://www.osf.io/2at49.

Biotic Stress-Induced Priming and De-Priming of Transcriptional Memory in Arabidopsis and Apple

Under natural growth conditions, plants experience various and repetitive biotic and abiotic stresses. Salicylic acid (SA) is a key phytohormone involved in the response to biotic challenges. Application of synthetic SA analogues can efficiently prime defense responses, and leads to improved pathogen resistance. Because SA analogues can result in long-term priming and memory, we identified genes for which expression was affected by the SA analogue and explored the role of DNA methylation in this memorization process. We show that treatments with an SA analogue can lead to long-term transcriptional memory of particular genes in Arabidopsis. We found that subsequent challenging of such plants with a bacterial elicitor reverted this transcriptional memory, bringing their expression back to the original pre-treatment level. We also made very similar observations in apple (Malus domestica), suggesting that this expression pattern is highly conserved in plants. Finally, we found a potential role for DNA methylation in the observed transcriptional memory behavior. We show that plants defective in DNA methylation pathways displayed a different memory behavior. Our work improves our understanding of the role of transcriptional memory in priming, and has important implication concerning the application of SA analogues in agricultural settings.

Memory processes underlying long-term semantic priming.

Two decades of research in semantic priming has provided substantial evidence for a distinction between short- and long-term semantic priming effects. Early models of cognition suggested a single mechanism to explain priming at short and long lags. Later models refuted this explanation and proposed that different mechanisms are necessary to account for different durations of priming effects. Two alternative explanations of long-term semantic priming effects have been proposed in the extant literature. The first explanation is that long-term semantic priming effects rely upon the incremental strengthening of abstract semantic memory representations. The second explanation is that long-term priming is the result of memory for prior cognitive operations. In two experiments, we used different semantic content - word meaning versus category membership - to investigate the mechanisms accountable for long-term semantic priming. Evidence from the two experiments suggests that long-term semantic priming effects are due to different memory processes for different semantic content. Long-term semantic priming of word meanings was dependent on strengthening abstract semantic memory representations and persistent priming of category membership was dependent on memory for prior cognitive operations.

Listeners and readers generalize their experience with word meanings across modalities.

Research has shown that adults’ lexical-semantic representations are surprisingly malleable. For instance, the interpretation of ambiguous words (e.g., bark) is influenced by experience such that recently encountered meanings become more readily available (Rodd et al., 2016, 2013). However, the mechanism underlying this word-meaning priming effect remains unclear, and competing accounts make different predictions about the extent to which information about word meanings that is gained within one modality (e.g., speech) is transferred to the other modality (e.g., reading) to aid comprehension. In two Web-based experiments, ambiguous target words were primed with either written or spoken sentences that biased their interpretation toward a subordinate meaning, or were unprimed. About 20 min after the prime exposure, interpretation of these target words was tested by presenting them in either written or spoken form, using word association (Experiment 1, N = 78) and speeded semantic relatedness decisions (Experiment 2, N = 181). Both experiments replicated the auditory unimodal priming effect shown previously (Rodd et al., 2016, 2013) and revealed significant cross-modal priming: primed meanings were retrieved more frequently and swiftly across all primed conditions compared with the unprimed baseline. Furthermore, there were no reliable differences in priming levels between unimodal and cross-modal prime-test conditions. These results indicate that recent experience with ambiguous word meanings can bias the reader’s or listener’s later interpretation of these words in a modality-general way. We identify possible loci of this effect within the context of models of long-term priming and ambiguity resolution.

How long is long-term priming? Classification and action priming in the scale of days.

Previous research has shown that stimulus-response associations comprise associations between the stimulus and the task (a classification task in particular) and the stimulus and the action performed as a response. These associations, contributing to the phenomenon of priming, affect behaviour after a delay of hundreds of trials and they are resistant against overwriting. Here, we investigate their longevity, testing their effects in short-term (seconds after priming) and long-term (24 hr and 1 week after priming) memory. Three experiments demonstrated that both stimulus-classification (S-C) and stimulus-action (S-A) associations show long-term memory effects. The results also show that retrieval of these associations can be modulated by the amount of engagement on the same task between encoding and retrieval, that is, how often participants performed this task between prime and probe sessions. Finally, results show that differences in processing time during encoding are linked to the amount of conflict caused during retrieval of S-C, but not S-A associations. These findings add new information to the existing model of priming as a memory system and pose questions about the interactions of priming and top-down control processes.

Long-Term Priming by Three Small Molecules Is a Promising Strategy for Enhancing Late Endothelial Progenitor Cell Bioactivities.

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and outgrowth endothelial cells (OECs) play a pivotal role in vascular regeneration in ischemic tissues; however, their therapeutic application in clinical settings is limited due to the low quality and quantity of patient-derived circulating EPCs. To solve this problem, we evaluated whether three priming small molecules (tauroursodeoxycholic acid, fucoidan, and oleuropein) could enhance the angiogenic potential of EPCs. Such enhancement would promote the cellular bioactivities and help to develop functionally improved EPC therapeutics for ischemic diseases by accelerating the priming effect of the defined physiological molecules. We found that preconditioning of each of the three small molecules significantly induced the differentiation potential of CD34+ stem cells into EPC lineage cells. Notably, long-term priming of OECs with the three chemical cocktail (OEC-3C) increased the proliferation potential of EPCs via ERK activation. The migration, invasion, and tube-forming capacities were also significantly enhanced in OEC-3Cs compared with unprimed OECs. Further, the cell survival ratio was dramatically increased in OEC-3Cs against H2O2-induced oxidative stress via the augmented expression of Bcl-2, a prosurvival protein. In conclusion, we identified three small molecules for enhancing the bioactivities of ex vivo-expanded OECs for vascular repair. Long-term 3C priming might be a promising methodology for EPC-based therapy against ischemic diseases.

Abstract 18: Evaluating the contribution of anti-myeloma immunity for the efficacy of oncolytic reovirus therapy

Abstract Introduction: The aim of this study was to examine the contribution of antitumor immunity for the efficacy of oncolytic reovirus therapy against multiple myeloma (MM). Oncolytic viruses (OV) have two main mechanisms of action; direct lytic killing and potentiation of antitumor immunity. The direct oncolytic potential of reovirus in MM has previously been demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo, but the importance of an enhanced immunologic antitumor response remains underinvestigated. Reovirus-induced antitumor immunity has been demonstrated in other types of cancer such as melanoma and chronic leukemia, and is of major importance for the efficacy of OV treatment. Thus, it was hypothesized that reovirus-induced antimyeloma immunity would contribute significantly to the efficacy of reovirus treatment for MM. Experimental Procedures: C57BL/KaLwRij mice were used in the 5TGM1 model system to establish MM in vivo. This model closely resembles human MM with induction of osteolytic bone disease and secretion of paraprotein. C57BL/KaLwRij mice have a fully functional immune system, comparable to C57BL/6 mice, and to our knowledge, this is the first immunocompetent model of MM for the study of reovirus efficacy. After establishment of MM in the bone by intravenous injection of bone-homing 5TGM1 cells, mice were treated with repeated injections of reovirus or PBS. Upon sacrifice, direct cytotoxicity and immune activation was examined using flow cytometry. All animal experiments were performed under an appropriate project license following approval by a local ethical review committee. In vivo findings were translated into human in vitro studies, using MM cell lines, healthy donor (HD) blood, and MM patient samples. Reovirus-induced Natural Killer (NK) cell activation and degranulation was examined using flow cytometry and priming of myeloma-specific T cells was performed using long-term priming cultures. Results: Tumor burden was reduced by reovirus treatment both in the bone marrow (BM) and spleen of tumor-bearing mice. The immune cell populations, including NK cells, CD4+ T cells, and CD8+ T cells, were restored to levels of tumor-naïve mice in the BM. NK cells were activated in the BM following reovirus treatment, which indicates the onset of an innate immune response. In the spleen, an increase in CD4+ T cells, in combination with CD8+ activation, was indicative of an early adaptive immune response. These results translate into human in vitro findings, using both HD and MM patient samples, with activation of NK cells in response to reovirus treatment and subsequent enhancement of NK cell degranulation and killing of MM target cells. Encouragingly, reovirus-activated NK cells were able to kill OPM2 cells, which are resistant to direct lytic killing. Preliminary human in vitro studies suggest that reovirus treatment can prime antimyeloma CD8+ T cells for the induction of a long-term protective response. Conclusions: Introducing a viral agent into the body requires a delicate immunologic balance to avoid neutralizing the virus by an antiviral response and simultaneously allowing the enhancement of antitumor immunity. The importance of enhanced antitumor immunity for OV therapy efficacy is becoming more widely recognized and antiviral immunity can in some circumstances contribute to tumor eradication. The findings in this study indicate that the antitumor immune response is also important in the MM setting, with activation of both innate and adaptive immune responses resulting in enhanced killing of MM cells, in particular those resistant to direct lytic killing. This suggests that both arms of OV therapy could play a role for MM eradication, including any minimal residual disease. Future work will explore whether the antimyeloma response can be further enhanced by combinatorial treatments, including current standard of care treatments. Citation Format: Louise M. E. Müller, Christopher Parrish, Gemma Migneco, Gina B. Scott, Matthew Holmes, Alan A. Melcher, Michelle A. Lawson, Gordon Cook, Fiona Errington-Mais. Evaluating the contribution of anti-myeloma immunity for the efficacy of oncolytic reovirus therapy [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Second AACR Conference on Hematologic Malignancies: Translating Discoveries to Novel Therapies; May 6-9, 2017; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2017;23(24_Suppl):Abstract nr 18.

L1 English / L2 Spanish: Orthography–phonology activation without contrasts

We consider how orthography activates sounds that are in a noncontrastive relationship in the second language (L2) and for which only one variant exists in the first language (L1). Participants were L1 English / L2 Spanish and native Spanish listeners. Intervocalically, Spanish graphemes ‘b d g’ correspond phonetically to stops and approximants (e.g. lobo ‘wolf’, lo[β]o), and in English they correspond only to stops. In Experiment 1, native and L2 Spanish listeners completed cross-modal (written–auditory) and within modal (auditory) priming tasks. Prime-target pairs were counterbalanced for phonetic variant. The results for L2 listeners in the cross-modal condition showed a significant interaction between variant and mode. Experiment 2 used long-term repetition priming to tap into longer-term representations and test whether L1 orthography is activated even when it is not strictly necessary to complete the task. Results for L2 speakers showed priming by both phonetic variants while for native listeners, only approximants showed a priming effect.

Long-Term Priming Prevails Against the Passage of Time and Countermanding Instructions

Long-Term Priming Prevails Against the Passage of Time and Countermanding Instructions

Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus group 2 allergen bound to 8-OH modified adenine reduces the Th2-mediated airway inflammation without inducing a Th17 response and autoimmunity.

8-OH modified adenine bound to Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus group 2 (nDer p2-Conj), a novel allergen-TLR7 agonist conjugate, improves murine airway inflammation in priming and therapeutic settings, however no data are known on the activity of this construct on Th17 cells. The aim of the study was to evaluate if nDer p2-Conj elicited in vivo Th17 cells and Th17-driven autoimmune responses, by using both short- and long-term priming and therapeutic protocols in a nDer p2-driven model of murine airway inflammation. The conjugate induced the in vitro production of cytokines favouring the Th17 polarization by bone marrow-derived dendritic cells. In short-term protocols, the priming or treatment with the conjugate ameliorated the airway inflammation by shifting Th2 allergen-specific cells into T cells producing IFN-γ, IL-10, but not IL-17A. Similar results were found in long-term protocol where the conjugate down-regulated airway inflammation without any evidence of autoimmune response and B cell compartment expansion. nDer p2-Conj also failed to shorten the spontaneous onset of diabetes on conjugates-primed NOD/LtJ mice. We found that neutrophils in BALF, ROR-γt and IL-17A expression in lungs were increased in conjugate-treated IL-10KO mice. These data emphasize the role of conjugate-driven IL-10 production, which can regulate the activity of memory Th17 cells and prevent the onset of autoimmune response.

The priming of word order in second language German

ABSTRACTThe present study investigates the priming and subsequent production of word order variation (adverb–verb–subject vs. subject–verb–adverb order) with temporal phrases (Experiment 1) and locative phrases (Experiment 2) among intermediate English–German second language learners. Participants exhibited comparable short-term priming for adverb-first word order in both experiments. In the initial baseline phase, participants produced adverb-first sentences with temporal phrases but not locative phrases, and only temporal phrases led to significant long-term priming, as measured in a postpriming phase. This suggests that at lower proficiency levels, long-term, but not short-term, priming may depend on the stability of specific semantically constrained constructions rather than more generalized syntactic representations and that such cumulative effects may be shaped by preferences for a particular construction in the native language.

Implicit short- and long-term memory direct our gaze in visual search.

Visual attention is strongly affected by the past: both by recent experience and by long-term regularities in the environment that are encoded in and retrieved from memory. In visual search, intertrial repetition of targets causes speeded response times (short-term priming). Similarly, targets that are presented more often than others may facilitate search, even long after it is no longer present (long-term priming). In this study, we investigate whether such short-term priming and long-term priming depend on dissociable mechanisms. By recording eye movements while participants searched for one of two conjunction targets, we explored at what stages of visual search different forms of priming manifest. We found both long- and short- term priming effects. Long-term priming persisted long after the bias was present, and was again found even in participants who were unaware of a color bias. Short- and long-term priming affected the same stage of the task; both biased eye movements towards targets with the primed color, already starting with the first eye movement. Neither form of priming affected the response phase of a trial, but response repetition did. The results strongly suggest that both long- and short-term memory can implicitly modulate feedforward visual processing.Electronic Supplementary MaterialThe online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13414-015-1021-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Long-term priming of visual search prevails against the passage of time and counteracting instructions.

Studies on intertrial priming have shown that in visual search experiments, the preceding trial automatically affects search performance: facilitating it when the target features repeat and giving rise to switch costs when they change-so-called (short-term) intertrial priming. These effects also occur at longer time scales: When 1 of 2 possible target colors is more frequent during an experiment block, this results in a prolonged and persistent facilitation for the color that was biased, long after the frequency bias is gone-so-called long-term priming. In this study, we explore the robustness of such long-term priming. In Experiment 1, participants were fully informed of the bias and instructed to prioritize the other unbiased color. Despite these instructions, long-term priming of the biased color persisted in this block, suggesting that guidance by long-term priming is an implicit effect. In Experiment 2, long-term priming was built up in 1 experimental session and was then assessed in a second session a week later. Long-term priming persisted across this week, emphasizing that long-term priming is truly a phenomenon of long-term memory. The results support the view that priming results from the automatic and implicit retrieval of memory traces of past trials. (PsycINFO Database Record

Supplemental Material for Long-Term Priming of Visual Search Prevails Against the Passage of Time and Counteracting Instructions

Supplemental Material for Long-Term Priming of Visual Search Prevails Against the Passage of Time and Counteracting Instructions

The Interdependence of Long- and Short-Term Components in Unmasked Repetition Priming: An Indication of Shared Resources.

It has been suggested that unmasked repetition priming is composed of distinct long-and short-term priming components. The current study sought to clarify the relationship between these components by examining the relationship between them. A total of 60 people (45 females, 15 males) participated in a computer-based lexical decision task designed to measure levels of short-term priming across different levels of long-term priming. The results revealed an interdependent relationship between the two components, whereby an increase in long-term priming prompted a decrease in short-term priming. Both long-term and short-term priming were accurately captured by a single power function over seven minutes post repetition, suggesting the two components may draw on the same resources. This interdependence between long- and short-term priming may serve to improve fluency in reading.

The long and the short of priming in visual search.

Memory affects visual search, as is particularly evident from findings that when target features are repeated from one trial to the next, selection is faster. Two views have emerged on the nature of the memory representations and mechanisms that cause these intertrial priming effects: independent feature weighting versus episodic retrieval of previous trials. Previous research has attempted to disentangle these views focusing on short term effects. Here, we illustrate that the episodic retrieval models make the unique prediction of long-term priming: biasing one target type will result in priming of this target type for a much longer time, well after the bias has disappeared. We demonstrate that such long-term priming is indeed found for the visual feature of color, but only in conjunction search and not in singleton search. Two follow-up experiments showed that it was the kind of search (conjunction versus singleton) and not the difficulty, that determined whether long-term priming occurred. Long term priming persisted unaltered for at least 200 trials, and could not be explained as the result of explicit strategy. We propose that episodic memory may affect search more consistently than previously thought, and that the mechanisms for intertrial priming may be qualitatively different for singleton and conjunction search. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13414-015-0860-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Can a single short-term mechanism account for priming of pop-out?

Trial-to-trial feature repetition speeds response times in pop-out visual search tasks. These priming effects are often ascribed to a short-term memory system. Recently, however, it has been reported that a ‘build-up’ sequence of repetitions could facilitate responses over 16 trials later – well beyond twice the typically reported time course (Vision Research, 2011, 51, 1972–1978). Here, we first report two replication attempts that yielded little to no support for such long-term priming of pop-out. The results instead fell in line with the predictions of a previously proposed computational model that describes priming as short-lived facilitation that decays over approximately eight trials (Vision Research, 2010, 50, 2110–2115). In the second part of this study, we show that these data are consistent with a simple formulation of decay with a single timescale, and that there is no significant priming beyond eight trials.