Prime Type Research Articles

Affect-Regulation Expectancies among Gamblers

Factor scores on a gambling expectancy questionnaire (GEQ) were used to subtype 132 university students who gamble regularly (37.9% male; M age = 22.6 years, SD = 6.04) as: Reward Expectancy Gamblers (Reward EGs)-have strong expectations that gambling augments positive mood, Relief Expectancy Gamblers (Relief EGs)-have strong expectations that gambling relieves negative affect, and Non-Expectancy Gamblers (Non-EGs)-have neither strong expectation. Gambling on a high-low card game was compared across subtypes following priming for either "relief" or "reward" affect-regulation expectancies with the Scrambled Sentence Test (SST). The hypothesized Prime type x GEQ subtype interaction was not significant. When a more stringent set of criteria for GEQ subtyping was imposed, the "purified" sub-sample (n = 54) resulted in the hypothesized statistically significant Prime type x GEQ subtype interaction. Relief EGs gambled more after being primed with the construct "relief of negative emotions" compared to after being primed with the construct "augmentation of positive emotion." Planned orthogonal contrasts showed a significant linear increase in number of bets made across GEQ subtypes when prime type corresponded to GEQ subtype. The results suggest a need for components in gambling treatment programs that address clients' expectancies that gambling can provide a specific desirable emotional outcome.

Distributed Generation Interface to the CERTS Microgrid

This paper focuses on the energy storage system and the power electronic interface included in microsources of the CERTS microgrid. CERTS stands for the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions. The consortium was formed in 1999 to research, develop, and disseminate new methods, tools, and technologies to protect and enhance the reliability of the U.S. electric power system and efficiency of competitive electricity markets. To provide the plug-and-play feature and the power quality requirements of the CERTS microgrid, all microsources regardless of their prime mover type must have a unified dynamic performance. This necessitates attaching an energy storage module to some or all of the microsources. The storage module is attached to the prime mover through a power electronic interface that couples the microsource to the microgrid. Details of the energy storage module, the power electronic interface and the corresponding controls are described. Performance of an example microsource, which includes a synchronous generator, a storage module and an electronic interface, is studied. Dynamic performance of the example microsource when operating in the CERTS microgrid is evaluated based on digital time-domain simulations in the EMTP-RV software environment. Effectiveness of the storage module, the electronic interface and the corresponding controls in enhancing the microsource performance is verified.

Attention and syntax in sentence production: A critical review

People often speak about visually perceived events that unfold in real time. In doing so speakers regularly translate the details of the visual world they describe onto the grammatical properties of the sentences about it. For example, the speaker needs to map her constantly changing attentional state onto the syntactic plan of the produced sentences. The present paper briefly discusses what attention is, explores methods for the co-activation of attentional and syntactic operations during the production of visually-mediated sentences in languages with different syntactic properties, and reviews the evidence for a regular link between the speaker’s choice of sentential structure and the distribution of the speaker’s attention to the event’s referents. Also, it discusses evidence for interactive properties of attentional and other types of priming on the speaker’s syntactic choice. Based on reviewed literature, we conclude that attention plays a crucial role in directing lexical and grammatical choices in human discourse. At the same time, the organization of the language’s grammar reciprocates this influence by constraining the extent to which the distribution of attention can affect the real-time syntactic choices. Finally, we discuss how attentional priming engages in complex interactions with other priming effects: it interacts with lexical priming but not with syntactic priming, supporting an encapsulated view of sentence formulation.

Masked repetition and translation priming in second language learners: a window on the time-course of form and meaning activation using erps.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) and masked translation priming served to examine the time-course of form and meaning activation during word recognition in second language learners. Targets were repetitions of, translations of, or were unrelated to the immediately preceding prime. In Experiment 1 all targets were in the participants' L2. In Experiment 2 all targets were in the participants' L1. In Exp 1 both within-language repetition and L1-L2 translation priming produced effects on the N250 component and the N400 component. In Experiment 2 only within-language repetition produced N250 effects, while both types of priming produced N400 effects. These results suggest rapid involvement of semantic representations during on-going form-level processing of printed words, and an absence of facilitatory connections between the form representations of non-cognate translation equivalents in L2 learners. The implications for bilingual theories of word processing are discussed.

An ERP investigation of orthographic priming with relative-position and absolute-position primes

The present study used event-related potentials to examine the time-course of relative-position and absolute-position orthographic priming. Relative-position priming was examined using primes formed by a concatenated subset of the target word's letters (e.g., cllet/COLLECT vs. dlema/COLLECT), and absolute-position priming was investigated using hyphenated versions of these primes (c-lle-t/COLLECT vs. d-lem-a/COLLECT). Both manipulations modulated the ERP waveform starting at around 100 ms post-target onset and extending into the N400 component. The first clear manifestation of priming was found in the N250 component, where hyphenated primes were found to have an earlier, more robust and more widely distributed effect than the concatenated primes. On the other hand, both prime types had similar effects on N400 amplitude. These results provide important information about the time-course of activation of location-specific and location-invariant (word-centered) orthographic representations during visual word recognition.

Integrative priming occurs rapidly and uncontrollably during lexical processing.

Lexical priming, whereby a prime word facilitates recognition of a related target word (e.g., nurse --> doctor), is typically attributed to association strength, semantic similarity, or compound familiarity. Here, the authors demonstrate a novel type of lexical priming that occurs among unassociated, dissimilar, and unfamiliar concepts (e.g., horse --> doctor). Specifically, integrative priming occurs when a prime word can be easily integrated with a target word to create a unitary representation. Across several manipulations of timing (stimulus onset asynchrony) and list context (relatedness proportion), lexical decisions for the target word were facilitated when it could be integrated with the prime word. Moreover, integrative priming was dissociated from both associative priming and semantic priming but was comparable in terms of both prevalence (across participants) and magnitude (within participants). This observation of integrative priming challenges present models of lexical priming, such as spreading activation, distributed representation, expectancy, episodic retrieval, and compound cue models. The authors suggest that integrative priming may be explained by a role activation model of relational integration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

The effect of context priming and task type on augmentative communication performance

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices include special purpose electronic devices that generate speech output and are used by individuals to augment or replace vocal communication. Word prediction, including context specific prediction, has been proposed to help overcome barriers to the use of these devices (e.g., slow communication rates and limited access to situation-related vocabulary), but has not been tested in terms of effects during actual task performance. In this study, we compared AAC device use, task performance, and user perceptions across three tasks, in conditions where the AAC device used either was, or was not, primed with task specific vocabularies. The participants in this study were adults with normal physical, cognitive, and communication abilities. Context priming had a marginally significant effect on AAC device use as measured by keystroke savings; however, these advantages did not translate into higher level measures of rate, task performance, or user perceptions. In contrast, there were various statistically significant process and performance differences across task type. Additionally, results for two different emulations of human performance showed significant keystroke savings across context conditions. However, these effects were mitigated in actual performance and did not translate into keystroke savings. This indicates to AAC device designers and users that keystroke-based measures of device use may not be predictive of high level performance.

Exploiting degrees of inflectional ambiguity: Stem form and the time course of morphological processing.

The authors compared sublexical and supralexical approaches to morphological processing with unambiguous and ambiguous inflected words and words with ambiguous stems in 3 masked and unmasked priming experiments in Finnish. Experiment 1 showed equal facilitation for all prime types with a short 60-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) but significant facilitation for unambiguous words only with a long 300-ms SOA. Experiment 2 showed that all potential readings of ambiguous inflections were activated under a short SOA. Whereas the prime-target form overlap did not affect the results under a short SOA, it significantly modulated the results with a long SOA. Experiment 3 confirmed that the results from masked priming were modulated by the morphological structure of the words but not by the prime-target form overlap alone. The results support approaches in which early prelexical morphological processing is driven by morph-based segmentation and form is used to cue selection between 2 candidates only during later processing.

Automaticity for numerical magnitude of two-digit Arabic numbers in children

This paper examines the automatic processing of the numerical magnitude of two-digit Arabic numbers using a Stroop-like task in school-aged children. Second, third, and fourth graders performed physical size judgments on pairs of two-digit numbers varying on both physical and numerical dimensions. To investigate the importance of synchrony between the speed of processing of the numerical magnitude and the physical dimensions on the size congruity effect (SCE), we used masked priming: numerical magnitude was subliminally primed in half of the trials, while neutral priming was used in the other half. The results indicate a SCE in physical judgments, providing the evidence of automatic access to the magnitude of two-digit numbers in children. This effect was modulated by the priming type, as a SCE only appeared when the numerical magnitude was primed. This suggests that young children needed a relative synchronization of numerical and physical dimensions to access the magnitude of two-digit numbers automatically.

Music-induced mood modulates the strength of emotional negativity bias: An ERP study

The present study investigated the effect of music-elicited moods on the subsequent affective processing through a music-primed valence categorization task. Event-related potentials were recorded for positive and negative emotional pictures that were primed by happy or sad music excerpts. The reaction time data revealed longer reaction times (RTs) for pictures following negative versus positive music pieces, irrespective of the valence of the picture. Additionally, positive pictures elicited faster response latencies than negative pictures, irrespective of the valence of the musical prime. Moreover, the main effect of picture valence, and the music by picture valence interaction effect were both significant for P2 amplitudes and for the averaged amplitudes at 500–700 ms interval. Negative pictures elicited smaller P2 amplitudes than positive pictures, and the amplitude differences between negative and positive pictures were larger with negative musical primes than with positive musical primes. Similarly, compared to positive pictures, negative pictures elicited more negative deflections during the 500–700 ms interval across prime types. The amplitude differences between negative and positive pictures were again larger under negative versus positive music primes at this interval. Therefore, the present study observed a clear emotional negativity bias during either prime condition, and extended the previous findings by showing increased strength of the negative bias under negative mood primes. This suggests that the neural sensitivity of the brain to negative stimuli varies with individuals’ mood states, and this bias is particularly intensified by negative mood states.

Priming T2 in a visual and auditory attentional blink task

Participants performed an attentional blink (AB) task including digits as targets and letters as distractors within the visual and auditory domains. Prior to the rapid serial visual presentation, a visual or auditory prime was presented in the form of a digit that was identical to the second target (T2) on 50% of the trials. In addition to the "classic" AB effect, an overall drop in performance on T2 was observed for the trials on which the stream was preceded by an identical prime from the same modality. No cross-modal priming was evident, suggesting that the observed inhibitory priming effects are modality specific. We argue that the present findings represent a special type of negative priming operating at a low feature level.

Attention and implicit memory in the category-verification and lexical decision tasks.

Prior research on implicit memory appeared to support 3 generalizations: Conceptual tests are affected by divided attention, perceptual tasks are affected by certain divided-attention manipulations, and all types of priming are affected by selective attention. These generalizations are challenged in experiments using the implicit tests of category verification and lexical decision. First, both tasks were unaffected by divided-attention tasks known to impact other priming tasks. Second, both tasks were unaffected by a manipulation of selective attention in which colored words were either named or their colors identified. Thus, category verification, unlike other conceptual tasks, appears unaffected by divided attention, and some selective-attention tasks, and lexical decision, unlike other perceptual tasks, appears unaffected by a difficult divided-attention task and some selective-attention tasks. Finally, both tasks were affected by a selective-attention task in which attention was manipulated across objects (rather than within objects), indicating some susceptibility to selective attention. The results contradict an analysis on the basis of the conceptual-perceptual distinction and other more specific hypotheses but are consistent with the distinction between production and identification priming.

112-P: Report of a new HLA-DRB1*03 allele escaping detection by high-resolution sequence-specific priming and sequence-based typing

112-P: Report of a new HLA-DRB1*03 allele escaping detection by high-resolution sequence-specific priming and sequence-based typing

Parafoveal-on-foveal and foveal word priming are different processes: Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence

Parafoveal-on-foveal priming refers to the presentation of an item (the prime) in parafoveal vision followed by the presentation of an item (the target) in foveal vision. In natural reading, the ‘parafoveal preview benefit’ subserves fluent reading as, e.g., reading times increase when such information is not available. Yet, the neural correlates of reading are mostly studied with foveally presented stimuli and little is known of this parafoveal influence. Here, we used complementary information from a behavioral study and a magnetoencephalography experiment to clarify the relationship between parafoveal-on-foveal and foveal priming. Unlike foveal priming, parafoveal-on-foveal priming was present only at short prime-to-target delay (< 100 ms). Behaviorally, the parafoveal priming effect was influenced by the prime visual field (left/right) and target lexical type (word/non-word), suggesting emphasis on perceptual analysis for LVF primes and on conceptual analysis for RVF primes. At the neural level, the overall sequence of activation was similar for foveal and parafoveal primes followed by foveal word targets, but the priming effects were bilateral for foveal primes versus left-lateralized for RVF primes. No neural effects of priming appeared for LVF primes, in line with the RVF preference imposed by the Western writing system. These results highlight the role of the left hemisphere in linguistic analysis and point out possible limitations of foveal stimulus presentation for drawing conclusions about natural reading.

The AN69 ST haemodialysis membrane under conditions of two different extracorporeal circuit rinse protocols a comparison of thrombogenicity parameters

Thrombogenicity is an important parameter of haemodialysis (HD) membrane biocompatibility. The surface of the polyacrylonitrile AN69 ST membrane is coated with a polyethylenimine. This modification allows heparin adsorption. The binding of heparin to the membrane surface occurs during priming of the extracorporeal circuit (ECC) by rinsing it with saline and heparin. Our aims were to assess and compare the thrombogenicity of the AN69 ST membrane under conditions of two extracorporeal circuit (ECC) rinse protocols-with and without unfractionated heparin (UFH). In a prospective, crossover and randomized study, we examined 10 patients during HD after ECC preparation with either rinse protocols. Prior to HD and at 15, 60 and 240 min, we determined plasma levels of the thrombin-antithrombin complexes (TAT), platelet factor 4 (PF4), heparin concentration (antiXa) and thrombocyte count. Systemic anticoagulation was performed using UFH. During HD after ECC rinse without UFH, there was a significantly earlier and more marked increase in TAT compared with UFH-containing rinse (P <0.05). Using Spearman coefficient, we demonstrated a significant correlation between TAT and antiXa at 60 min (r = -0.534) and 240 min (r = -0.538). A comparison of the TAT/antiXa ratios between rinses at 60 min revealed a significantly higher increase in TAT following UFH-free rinse (P <0.05). There was no difference in PF4 between the rinses. Platelet count did not change significantly during HD using either rinse protocol. Based on plasma TAT levels, ECC priming with an UFH-containing solution reduces the thrombogenicity of the AN69 ST membrane. There is no significant difference between both types of priming concerning PF4 and thrombocyte count.

The effect of voice cuing on releasing Chinese speech from informational masking

In a cocktail-party environment, human listeners are able to use perceptual-level and cognitive-level cues to segregate the attended target speech from other background conversations. At the cognitive level, priming the listener with part of the target speech in quiet can markedly improve the recognition of the remaining parts when the target speech and competing speech are presented at the same time. Hence, knowledge of content (content cuing) improves speech recognition when other people are talking. In addition, familiarity or knowledge of the voice characteristics of the target talker could also help the listener attend to the target talker when other talkers are present. The present study investigated the extent to which a cognitive-level cue (content cuing) and a perceptual-level cue (voice cuing) can improve word identification for speech masked by noise or by other speech in Chinese listeners. Specifically, listeners were primed with part of a sentence in quiet before a sentence was repeated in the presence of either noise or speech. The priming sentence was always in the same voice as the target sentence. Two kinds of primes were investigated: same-sentence primes, and different-sentence primes. Under speech-masking conditions, each of the two prime types significantly improved recognition of the last key word in the full-length target sentence. Under noise-masking conditions, same-sentence primes had a weak but significant releasing effect, but different-sentence primes had only a negligible releasing effect. These results suggest that in addition to content cues, voice cues can be used by Chinese listeners to release speech from masking by other talkers.

Unusual clinical and immunologic manifestations of transplacentally acquired maternal T cells in severe combined immunodeficiency

The persistence of transplacentally transferred maternal T cells is common in infants with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), occurring in more than half of patients with SCID undergoing transplantation at our institution. These T cells respond poorly to mitogens in vitro but can cause cutaneous graft-versus-host disease; however, other effects of these cells are unknown. We describe 2 infants with SCID who had unusual problems associated with transplacentally transferred maternal T cells. Patient 1 was a 5-month-old girl with Janus kinase 3-deficient SCID who had 4% circulating CD3(+) T cells but no lymphocyte proliferative response to mitogens. Although the number of T cells increased after 2 nonchemoablated, T cell-depleted, haploidentical, paternal bone marrow transplantations, T-cell function failed to develop, and she became pancytopenic. Restriction fragment length polymorphism studies of flow cytometry-sorted blood T cells revealed all to be of maternal origin. A subsequent nonchemoablated, T cell-depleted maternal transplantation resulted in normal T-cell function and marrow recovery. Patient 2 was a 9-month-old girl with IL-7Ralpha-deficient SCID who presented with autoimmune pancytopenia. She had 8% blood T cells (all CD45RO(+)) but no response to mitogens. High-resolution HLA sequence-specific priming typing detected both maternal haplotypes, indicating the presence of maternal cells. Her pancytopenia resolved after treatment with rituximab and was thought to be due to host B-cell activation by transplacentally acquired maternal T cells. Persistent transplacentally acquired maternal T cells in infants with SCID can mediate immunologic functions despite failing to respond to mitogens in vitro. We present evidence that these cells can cause allograft rejection and immune cytopenias.

Unconscious, stimulus-dependent priming and conscious, percept-dependent priming with chromatic stimuli

Using metacontrast masking to suppress the conscious registration of a prime stimulus, Breitmeyer, Ro, and Singhal (2004) showed that color priming produced by a masked prime disk occurs at unconscious stimulus-dependent rather than at percept-dependent levels of visual processing. The current set of experiments compares this type of unconscious stimulus-dependent priming to conscious priming produced by a prime that, in two separate ways, is rendered visible and thus activates percept-dependent visual processes. The results indicate that while the masked prime again acts at a stimulus-dependent level of processing, the unmasked, visible primes additionally act at a later percept-dependent level of processing.

NK–KIR ligand identification: a quick Q‐PCR approach for HLA‐C epitope typing

Interaction of donor natural killer (NK)-cell-associated killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) with the patient's human leukocyte antigen-C (HLA-C) ligands can result in an alloreactive NK response after haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. In many retrospective studies, additional HLA-C-typing data are required to predict NK-cell alloreactivity. We developed a Taqman assay using the quantitative polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR) technique that facilitates HLA-C epitope typing, allowing the assignment of HLA-C group 1 or 2 alleles based on the dimorphism at residues 77 and 80 rather than based on the sequence specific priming (SSP) and sequence-based typing allele types. Q-PCR analysis for HLA-C epitope detection showed three clusters reflecting homozygous group 1 or 2 and heterozygous samples. This new approach introduces a quick HLA-C epitope screening method to define the presence of the ligand for the KIR-HLA-C interaction.

Priming us and them: Automatic assimilation and contrast in group attitudes.

Social judgment theory holds that a person's own attitudes function as reference points, influencing the perception of others' attitudes. The authors argue that attitudes themselves are influenced by reference points, namely, the presumed attitudes of others. Whereas exposure to a group that acts as a contextual reference should cause attitude assimilation, exposure to a group that acts as a comparative reference should cause attitude contrast. In Study 1, participants subliminally primed with their political ingroup or outgroup endorsed more extreme political positions than did controls. Study 2 demonstrated that prime types known to uniquely facilitate assimilation and contrast enhanced the polarization effect in the ingroup and outgroup conditions, respectively. Study 3 established an important boundary condition for whether group salience produces attitude assimilation or contrast by showing that perceived closeness to the elderly moderates the direction and strength of the group priming effect. The results suggest that the transition from assimilation to contrast occurs when a group ceases to function as a context and becomes a comparison point. Implications for social judgment theory, assimilation and contrast research, and conflict escalation are discussed.