TY - JOUR
T1 - Effects of dividing attention during encoding on perceptual priming of unfamiliar visual objects
AU - Soldan, Anja
AU - Mangels, Jennifer A.
AU - Cooper, Lynn A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Address correspondence to: Anja Soldan, Cognitive Neuroscience Division, Taub Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, 630 West 168th Street, P & S Box 16, New York, NY 10032, USA. E-mail: as1578@columbia.edu This research was supported in part by a National Institute on Aging grant RO1 AG16714 to Yaakov Stern and Lynn A. Cooper, a National Institute of Mental Health grant R21 066129 to Jennifer A. Mangels and a W. M. Keck Foundation grant to Columbia University (sponsoring J. A. Mangels). This research is part of the doctoral dissertation of Anja Soldan and conducted under the supervision of Jennifer A. Mangels and Lynn A. Cooper. We thank Tahmid Chowdhury, Mariely Hernandez, and Anna Zubkina for their help in collecting the data, and John H. Hilton and Tomislav Pavlicic for their useful suggestions.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - According to the distractor-selection hypothesis (Mulligan, 2003), dividing attention during encoding reduces perceptual priming when responses to non-critical (i.e., distractor) stimuli are selected frequently and simultaneously with critical stimulus encoding. Because direct support for this hypothesis comes exclusively from studies using familiar word stimuli, the present study tested whether the predictions of the distractor-selection hypothesis extend to perceptual priming of unfamiliar visual objects using the possible/impossible object decision test. Consistent with the distractor-selection hypothesis, Experiments 1 and 2 found no reduction in priming when the non-critical stimuli were presented infrequently and non-synchronously with the critical target stimuli, even though explicit recognition memory was reduced. In Experiment 3, non-critical stimuli were presented frequently and simultaneously during encoding of critical stimuli; however, no decrement in priming was detected, even when encoding time was reduced. These results suggest that priming in the possible/impossible object decision test is relatively immune to reductions in central attention and that not all aspects of the distractor-selection hypothesis generalise to priming of unfamiliar visual objects. Implications for theoretical models of object decision priming are discussed.
AB - According to the distractor-selection hypothesis (Mulligan, 2003), dividing attention during encoding reduces perceptual priming when responses to non-critical (i.e., distractor) stimuli are selected frequently and simultaneously with critical stimulus encoding. Because direct support for this hypothesis comes exclusively from studies using familiar word stimuli, the present study tested whether the predictions of the distractor-selection hypothesis extend to perceptual priming of unfamiliar visual objects using the possible/impossible object decision test. Consistent with the distractor-selection hypothesis, Experiments 1 and 2 found no reduction in priming when the non-critical stimuli were presented infrequently and non-synchronously with the critical target stimuli, even though explicit recognition memory was reduced. In Experiment 3, non-critical stimuli were presented frequently and simultaneously during encoding of critical stimuli; however, no decrement in priming was detected, even when encoding time was reduced. These results suggest that priming in the possible/impossible object decision test is relatively immune to reductions in central attention and that not all aspects of the distractor-selection hypothesis generalise to priming of unfamiliar visual objects. Implications for theoretical models of object decision priming are discussed.
KW - Divided attention
KW - Perceptual priming
KW - Possible and impossible figures
KW - Unfamiliar objects
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U2 - 10.1080/09658210802360595
DO - 10.1080/09658210802360595
M3 - Article
C2 - 18821167
AN - SCOPUS:55349142165
SN - 0965-8211
VL - 16
SP - 873
EP - 895
JO - Memory
JF - Memory
IS - 8
ER -