Priming Experiments Research Articles

Anxious About Social Violence: The Emotional Underpinnings of Support for Gun Control

ObjectiveWe theorize that anxiety (fear) related to mass shootings and social violence increases support for gun control among the American public.MethodsWe support our theory with a regression discontinuity analysis based on an actual mass shooting, observational analyses from the same data set testing the relationship between fear and support for gun control, and two survey experiments that prime anxiety in the context of mass shootings and social violence.FindingsWe show that support for gun control increased on the day after an actual mass shooting. Observational analysis shows a positive correlation between fear of crime and support for gun control. One priming experiment shows that inducing anxiety about mass shootings increases support for gun control. A second priming experiment shows that exposure to a story about social violence activates anxiety and also increases support for gun control.ConclusionsOur analyses show that anxiety related to mass shootings and mass violence increases support for gun control.

Morphosemantic activation of opaque Chinese words in sentence comprehension

Two cross-modal priming experiments were conducted to investigate morphological processing in Chinese spoken word recognition during sentence comprehension. Participants heard sentences that contained opaque prime words and performed lexical decisions on visual targets that were related to second morpheme meanings of opaque words or whole-word meanings. The targets were presented at the auditory onset of the second morphemes or the subsequent syllables after the opaque primes to examine the time course of effects. In a neutral sentence context (Experiment 1), opaque word morpheme meanings produced morphological priming on target word recognition, which preceded lexical priming. When context biased toward whole opaque words (Experiment 2), morphological priming disappeared, while the effect of lexical meanings remained significant and emerged earlier than the effect of lexical meanings in the neutral context. These findings suggest that morphemes play a role in Chinese spoken word recognition, but their effects depend on the prior context during sentence comprehension.

Experiment and Fail

Priming studies, mostly found in the subdiscipline of social psy-chology, have been the subject of vigorous debates among method-ologists, philosophers of science, and priming researchers them-selves. This article contributes to the debate about priming stud-ies by carefully examining and dissecting one priming study inparticular, namorgely the 2020 article "Alcohol Cues and their Effects on Sexually Aggressive Thoughts" by Julie Leboeuf, Stine Linden-Andersen, andJonathan Carriere. By pointing out the flaws of this supposedreproduction study, I reflect on the various levels of complexitythat are involved in conducting priming experiments with humansubjects. I conclude that the call for more reproductions or repli-cations is worthwhile, but only if the original experiments aresolid and theoretically interesting.

Masked identity priming reflects an encoding advantage in developing readers

The masked priming technique is widely used to explore the early moments of letter and word identification. Although this technique is increasingly used in experiments with young readers, the mechanism in play during masked priming with early readers has not yet been fully explored. We investigated the masked priming effects from a modeling perspective; we instantiated competing theories as data models (using Bayes factors) and as a computational model (diffusion model). We carried out a masked priming experiment using identity primes with second- and fourth-grade participants, and we analyzed the data through an evidence accumulation model lens. The priming effect manifests as a shift in the response time distribution, which in evidence accumulation models is accounted for by changes in the encoding process. We describe such changes as savings that have three features of theoretical importance. First, they are numerically very close to the stimulus onset asynchrony between primes and targets. Second, they remain relatively constant from second grade to fourth grade. Third, they seem to operate at the level of abstract orthographic representation because the priming effect occurs in both case-matched and case-mismatched pairs. These findings also have consequences for the practice of data transformation in developmental research; some patterns of data, when transformed, would produce spurious effects.

Functional connectivity of the left inferior frontal gyrus during semantic priming

Recent applications of computationally calculated word co-occurrences allowed the prediction of left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) activation during semantic word processing. Hence, an interactive activation model, the associative read-out model (AROM), utilizes co-occurrences in its semantic processing layer and proposes connectivity from the LIFG along the ventral visual stream. Direct empirical evidence for its connectivity assumptions is so far missing, however. In this study, we employed psychophysiological interaction analysis on the neuroimaging data of a semantic priming experiment, targeting the LIFG as main region to resolve semantic conflicts. We further manipulated the prime and target word by co-occurrence-based direct association and semantic similarity in a full-factorial design. At a low semantic similarity, we observed increased functional connectivity of the LIFG to the fusiform gyrus, the hippocampus, the anterior cingulate cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex, indicating a connective pattern analogous to the semantic layer of the AROM. Surprisingly, a low (compared to a high) direct association showed no difference in brain activation, which raises the question about the diverging cognitive processes of the two priming types.

한국어 고급 학습자의 용언 활용형 처리에 대한 점화 실험 연구

This study investigated how L2 Korean advanced learners process regularly and irregularly inflected forms of Korean verbs, and whether this processing mechanism follows a single mechanism account or a dual mechanism account. In addition, it examined the effect of the learner’s working memory capacity on the reaction time or/and the accuracy rate in the chosen priming tasks. The patterns of facilitation on present tense verb targets were examined in three experiments. In the study, there were 72 participants with TOPIK level 6, who performed three lexical decision tasks with either a masked visual prime presented during 43ms (Experiment 1) or 230ms (Experiment 2) or an auditory prime (Experiment 3). Next, the priming for six different types of verbal inflections were compared: regular verbs with no orthographical or phonological changes, regular verbs with only phonological changes to their stem, regular verbs with only orthographical changes, irregular verbs with their stem omitted or alternated, irregular verbs with changes in their endings and irregular verbs with changes in both their stem and endings. The study found determined that (i) no priming effects in either regular or irregular inflections revealed in most conditions, which supports a single mechanism account, and (ii) the influence of working memory capacity of L2 learners showed as higher the working memory was, faster the reaction time was completed in those cases.

The Role of Attention in Word Recognition: Results from OB1-Reader.

When reading, orthographic information is extracted not only from the word the reader is looking at, but also from adjacent words in the parafovea. Here we examined, using the recently introduced OB1‐reader computational model, how orthographic information can be processed in parallel across multiple words and how orthographic information can be integrated across time and space. Although OB1‐reader is a model of text reading, here we used it to simulate single‐word recognition experiments in which parallel processing has been shown to play a role by manipulating the surrounding context in flanker and priming paradigms. In flanker paradigms, observers recognize a central word flanked by other letter strings located left and right of the target and separated from the target by a space. The model successfully accounts for the finding that such flankers can aid word recognition when they contain bigrams of the target word, independent of where those flankers are in the visual field. In priming experiments, in which the target word is preceded by a masked prime, the model accounts for the finding that priming occurs independent of whether the prime and target word are in the same location or not. Crucial to these successes is the key role that spatial attention plays within OB1‐reader, as it allows the model to receive visual input from multiple locations in parallel, while limiting the kinds of errors that can potentially occur under such spatial pooling of orthographic information.

How do phonology and orthography feed back to influence syntactic encoding in language production? Evidence from structural priming in Mandarin.

Do speakers make use of a word's phonological and orthographic forms to determine the syntactic structure of a sentence? We reported two Mandarin structural priming experiments involving homophones to investigate word-form feedback on syntactic encoding. Participants tended to reuse the syntactic structure across sentences; such a structural priming effect was enhanced when the prime and target sentences used homophone verbs (the homophone boost), regardless of whether the homophones were heterographic (homophones written in different character; Experiments 1 and 2) or homographic (homophones written in the same character; Experiment 2). Critically, the homophone boost was comparable between homographic and heterographic homophone primes (Experiment 2). Hence unlike phonology, orthography appears to play a minimal role in mediating structural priming in production. We suggest that the homophone boost results from lemma associations between homophones that develop due to phonological identity between homophones early during language learning; such associations stabilise before literacy acquisition, thus limiting the influence of orthographic identity on lemma association between homophones and in turn on structural priming in language production.

The effects of vocabulary knowledge in L2 semantic lexical engagement: The case of adult learners of English as a second language

There is evidence that L1 and L2 lexical engagement of novel items occurs in adulthood. However, previous studies have not addressed the effects of individual differences on that engagement. Hence, it is unknown how individual differences may influence semantic lexical engagement gains in L1 and L2 adult learners. This study investigates the effects of pre-existing vocabulary knowledge on L2 semantic lexical engagement of recently learned novel words. A semantic priming experiment, across two consecutive days, was conducted. A group of advanced L2 learners (n=26) and L1 learners (n=26) participated in the study. They were trained on pseudowords acting as verbs (n=7) and nouns (n=7). Vocabulary knowledge was measured via an online vocabulary size test. On day one, participants learned the meaning of the pseudowords via reading 12 repetitions of the novel words embedded into English sentences. Immediately, after the reading session, participants undertook surprise recognition and recall vocabulary post-tests. On day two, participants took part in a semantic lexical decision task (LDT) with priming to test L2 semantic lexical engagement of the novel words learned on day one. The data were analysed through a series of general and linear mixed-effects models. The results showed that L1 and L2 participants engaged the meaning of the recently learned novel words. Previous vocabulary knowledge predicted faster recognition of semantic related and unrelated primes in the LDT task. It is concluded that L1 and L2 adult learners lexically engaged the meaning of the recently learned words and that vocabulary size is a predictor of L2 semantic lexical engagement of novel words within the conditions of this study. The empirical findings provide a new understanding of the role vocabulary knowledge on L1 and L2 semantic lexical engagement of novel words.

Clinical and epidemiological characteristics and morphological peculiarities of urogenital trichomoniasis nowadays

Importance of the topic is stipulated with the current significant spread of infectious diseases of the urogenital tract, caused by the representatives of the protozoa genus Trichomonas.Aim. Evaluate the prevalence and peculiarities of contemporary trichomonas infection (Trichomonas vaginalis, Pentatrichomonas hominis, Trichomonas tenax), with the consideration of the associated bacterial infections that cause the urogenital pathology and the ultrastructural peculiarities of Trichomonas vaginalis morphotypes in the patients with chronic infectious diseases of the genitourinary organs.Material and methods. The research was carried out among 377 patients with chronic infectious diseases of the genitourinary organs. Routine bacterioscopic and bacteriological methods were applied. In addition, Trichomonas tenax and Pentatrichomonas hominis were detected using real-time polymerase chain reaction and applying original experimental primers. The ultrastructure of the trichomonads was studied using a PEM-125K electron microscope equipped with the SAI-01A (SELMI) system, using a CCD camera DX 2 and KAPPA software package.Results. Trichomonas vaginalis was detected in 48.3 % using the methods of optical microscopy and culture media inoculation. Trichomonas tenax was detected in 18.2 % and Pentatrichomonas hominis was detected in 67.1 % with the polymerase chain reaction. Development of the pathological process in the urogenital system of the studied patients (up to 90 %) was caused with the microbial associations, in particular, with Ureaplasma urealyticum (26.1 %), Chlamydia trachomatis (16.7 %), Mycoplasma hominis and Mycoplasma genitalium (13.9 %) and various kinds of opportunistic pathogenic microflora (up to 60 %), which lead to dysbiosis of urogenital system. It was proved that the oval morphotype Trichomonas vaginalis may be referred to the virulent forms; it was detected more often (68 %) than the piriform morphotype.Conclusions. Possible presence of trichomonads of three species: Trichomonas vaginalis, Trichomonas tenax, Pentatrichomonas hominis, in particular in pathological microbial associations, as important factors of the emergence and / or development of the pathological process, was established in the human genitourinary system. It is reasonable to refer the oval morphotype Trichomonas vaginalis to the virulent forms of this agent.

Detection of the RNA for new multicomponent virus in patients with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in southern Russia

Background: Recently, a new multicomponent RNA-containing virus was described and called as Jingmen tick virus (JMTV) supposedly belonging to flaviviruses. A virus consists of four viral particles and JMTV was firstly isolated from ticks in China and South America.
 Aims: Detection viral RNA specific for JMTV complex, sequencing genome fragments and taxonomy identification novel virus from JMTV complex in patients with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) from southern European part of Russia.
 Materials and methods: Panel of 20 randomly selected sera from patients with confirmed Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever was collected in 2016 and was used for detection JMTV and CCHF viral RNA by PCR with experimental primers. Subsequent sequencing of isolated fragments of viral genomes was used for identification JMTV and CCHF virus genetic materials and phylogenetic analyses.
 Results: The viral RNAs of the CCHF virus and JMTV were detected in blood of four patients. Sequencing of the isolated PCR fragment of S segment CCHF virus allowed identifying these RNA isolates as Europe 1 lineage, subgroups Va and Vb of the CCHF virus that is a typical for the southern European part of the Russia. The nucleotide sequences of segment 2 (GP glycoprotein) of the JMTV were also detected by RP PCR and sequencing in these human sera. The new JMTV isolates were clustered together by phylogenetic analysis. The level of nucleotide identity for newly discovered JMTV isolates was only about 81-82% with comparison to the previously described European variants (Kosovo) of the JMTV.
 Conclusions: The results suggest that viral genomic RNA for new multicomponent flavivirus named as Manych virus and related to the JMTV complex was discovered in sera of CCHF patients in Russia.

Beyond Performance: Racial Resentment and Whites’ Negativity Toward Government

We argue that since the 1960s, with increased descriptive representation in elected positions and in key administrative posts, government has become racialized. As a result, white racial conservatives are more likely to be less trusting and feel more threatened by government. The link between racial attitudes and beliefs about government suggests that the decline in public trust may not be simply a response to performance but rather a result of in-congruence in values between white racial conservatives and public institutions. Furthermore, the racialization of government constitutes a path for racial “spillover” in nonracial policy domains. Using a priming experiment and the 1988-2016 ANES we demonstrate a strong negative relationship between racial resentment and various measures of support for government. We also show that racial resentment has indirect effects on several nonracial and racialized policy domains through its effect on government attitudes.

Competition between whole-word and decomposed representations of English prefixed words

English aspiration is influenced by word structure: in general, a voiceless stop following s is unaspirated (des[t]royed), but it can be aspirated if a prefix-stem boundary intervenes (dis[th]rusts) (Baker et al. 2007). In a production study of 110 words prefixed with dis- or mis-, we show that even in prefixed words, there is variation (dis[k]laimers ∼ dis[kh]laimers), and that aspiration in such words is correlated with word and stem frequency. The more frequent the word, the less likely aspiration, but the more frequent the stem, the more likely aspiration. This contrasting frequency effect is characteristic of the type of competition Hay posits between whole-word lexical access and morphologically decomposed lexical access (Hay 2003): frequent words will tend to be accessed as wholes (and therefore behave as though there is no prefix-stem boundary), but frequent stems will encourage decomposed, prefix + stem access. In order to test whether there is active online competition, as opposed to simply frequency effects that are somehow lexicalized, we also conduct a priming experiment. We find that exposing participants to other prefixed words encourages them to aspirate target words, as compared to when they have been exposed to similar but non-prefixed words. These results provide evidence for active online competition.

How Monitor Characteristics Affect Human Perception in Visual Computer Experiments: CRT vs. LCD Monitors in Millisecond Precise Timing Research

Liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors are nowadays standard in computerized visual presentation. However, when millisecond precise presentation is concerned, they have often yielded imprecise and unreliable presentation times, with substantial variation across specific models, making it difficult to know whether they can be used for precise vision experiments or not. The present paper intends to act as hands-on guide to set up an experiment requiring millisecond precise visual presentation with LCD monitors. It summarizes important characteristics relating to precise visual stimulus presentation, enabling researchers to transfer parameters reported for cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors to LCD monitors. More importantly, we provide empirical evidence from a preregistered study showing the suitability of LCD monitors for millisecond precise timing research. Using sequential testing, we conducted a masked number priming experiment using CRT and LCD monitors. Both monitor types yielded comparable results as indicated by Bayes factor favoring the null hypothesis of no difference between display types. More specifically, we found masked number priming under conditions of zero awareness with both types of monitor. Thus, the present study highlights the importance of hardware settings for empirical psychological research; inadequate settings might lead to more “noise” in results thereby concealing potentially existing effects.

Partisan Endorsement Experiments Do Not Affect Mass Opinion on COVID-19

The partisan politics and polarized messaging surrounding COVID-19 have attracted wide interest. We present the findings of a novel survey experiment, fielded March 21-23, 2020, on a nationally-representative sample of Americans. We found no statistically significant effects of partisan endorsements or messaging from President Trump on a wide range of health behaviors and policy attitudes. We speculate on potential explanations for these null results, such as America’s saturated media environment or heterogeneous effects by party. Our results suggest that priming experiments face serious obstacles when implemented at the same time as a national crisis is unfolding.

Modeling Morphological Priming in German With Naive Discriminative Learning

Both localist and connectionist models, based on experimental results obtained for English and French, assume that the degree of semantic compositionality of a morphologically complex word is reflected in how it is processed. Since priming experiments using English and French morphologically related prime-target pairs reveal stronger priming when complex words are semantically transparent (e.g., {\em refill--fill\/}) compared to semantically more opaque pairs (e.g., {\em restrain--strain}), localist models set up connections between complex words and their stems only for semantically transparent pairs. Connectionist models have argued that the effect of transparency should arise as an epiphenomenon in PDP networks. However, for German, a series of studies has revealed equivalent priming for both transparent and opaque prime-target pairs, which suggests mediation of lexical access by the stem, independent of degrees of semantic compositionality. This study reports a priming experiment that replicates equivalent priming for transparent and opaque pairs. We show that these behavioral results can be straightforwardly modeled by a computational implementation of Word and Paradigm Morphology ({\sc wpm}), Naive Discriminative Learning ({\sc ndl}). Just as {\sc wpm}, {\sc ndl} eschews the theoretical construct of the morpheme. {\sc Ndl} succeeds in modeling the German priming data by inspecting the extent to which a discrimination network pre-activates the target lexome from the orthographic properties of the prime. Measures derived from an {\sc ndl} network, complemented with a semantic similarity measure derived from distributional semantics, predict lexical decision latencies with somewhat improved precision compared to classical measures such as word frequency, prime type, and human association ratings. We discuss both the methodological implications of our results, as well as their implications for models of the mental lexicon.

Root and Pattern Effects in the Processing of Spoken Non-Words in Arabic

Words in Arabic are formed by mapping roots into patterns. Conducting a series of priming experiments, Boudelaa and Marslen-Wilson (2015, p. 955) have concluded that “root and word pattern morphemes function as abstract cognitive entities, operating independently of semantic factors and dissociable from possible phonological confounds” In the present study, plausibility of this conclusion is tested by investigating native Arabic speakers’ sensitivity to the presence of roots and patterns when processing spoken non-words in Arabic. 50 native Arabic speakers were given a 7-point word-likeness rating task. In this task, participants were asked to rate the word-likeness of 132 auditorily presented non-words in Arabic. 88 of these non-words were created by using real Arabic roots (e.g. /mlk/) that varied in their type and token frequencies and were mapped into two different types of pseudo patterns. Results have shown that native Arabic speakers are sensitive to the presence of roots in the non-words. Specifically, root type frequency had the strongest effect on subjects’ ratings of the non-words in both types of patterns. Implications of these findings to theories of the Arabic mental lexicon will be discussed.

Why is the Mass Public Not More Supportive of Free Trade? Evidence from the United States

AbstractThis article explores why citizens favor protection despite the economic case for free trade. It argues that due to a lack of training and in an environment of stable prices, many individuals are not aware of the consumption benefits. Even when they are aware, citizens tend to discount these benefits due to media coverage of the employment costs and loss aversion. The article presents survey evidence from an American sample, showing that a belief in lost jobs is more strongly associated with trade preferences than a belief in lower prices. Given that the former pushes citizens toward less favorable trade attitudes, it also presents evidence from a priming experiment, testing if attitudes can be moved in a more favorable direction with positive information. Factual information about the consumer benefits has no effect, but information about the employment effects shifts attitudes positively. In the present environment, it thus appears more effective to prime pro-trade attitudes by appealing to jobs than to prices.

Pupillometry correlates of visual priming, and their dependency on autistic traits.

In paradigms of visual search where the search feature (say color) can change from trial to trials, responses are faster for trials where the search color is repeated than when it changes. This is a clear example of "priming" of attention. Here we test whether the priming effects can be revealed by pupillometry, and also whether they are related to autistic-like personality traits, as measured by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). We repeated Maljkovic and Nakayama's (1994) classic priming experiment, asking subjects to identify rapidly the shape of a singleton target defined by color. As expected, reaction times were faster when target color repeated, and the effect accumulated over several trials; but the magnitude of the effect did not correlate with AQ. Reaction times were also faster when target position was repeated, again independent of AQ. Presentation of stimuli caused the pupil to dilate, and the magnitude of dilation was greater for switched than repeated trials. This effect did not accumulate over trials, and did not correlate with the reaction times difference, suggesting that the two indexes measure independent aspects of the priming phenomenon. Importantly, the amplitude of pupil modulation correlated negatively with AQ, and was significant only for those participants with low AQ. The results confirm that pupillometry can track perceptual and attentional processes, and furnish useful information unobtainable from standard psychophysics, including interesting dependencies on personality traits.

Pupillometry correlates of visual priming, and their dependency on autistic traits

In paradigms of visual search where the search feature (say color) can change from trial to trials, responses are faster for trials where the search color is repeated than when it changes. This is a clear example of “priming” of attention. Here we test whether the priming effects can be revealed by pupillometry, and also whether they are related to autistic-like personality traits, as measured by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). We repeated Maljkovic and Nakayama's (1994) classic priming experiment, asking subjects to identify rapidly the shape of a singleton target defined by color. As expected, reaction times were faster when target color repeated, and the effect accumulated over several trials; but the magnitude of the effect did not correlate with AQ. Reaction times were also faster when target position was repeated, again independent of AQ. Presentation of stimuli caused the pupil to dilate, and the magnitude of dilation was greater for switched than repeated trials. This effect did not accumulate over trials, and did not correlate with the reaction times difference, suggesting that the two indexes measure independent aspects of the priming phenomenon. Importantly, the amplitude of pupil modulation correlated negatively with AQ, and was significant only for those participants with low AQ. The results confirm that pupillometry can track perceptual and attentional processes, and furnish useful information unobtainable from standard psychophysics, including interesting dependencies on personality traits.