An attempt to demonstrate the persistence of semantically induced negative priming.

Type of content
Theses / Dissertations
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Thesis discipline
Psychology
Degree name
Master of Science
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Journal Title
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Language
English
Date
2002
Authors
Hewitson, Joanne
Abstract

Two experiments investigated inhibitory processes in visual selective attention. In particular, these experiments explored the effect of intervening trials on Identity and Semantic Negative Priming using word stimuli. Participants made continuous lexical decisions to lower case target items that were accompanied by upper case distractor words. The distractor word on a prime trial was either umelated to, identical to, or thematically related to the target word on a critical probe trial that appeared after 54 intervening displays. On the basis of previous research that has revealed long term NP to previously ignored words (e.g. Neumann & Russell, 2000) it was argued that Identity Repetition NP would be observed under the present conditions. However, while immediate Ignored Semantic NP has been observed elsewhere (Russell & Neumann, 2001 ), previous research has not investigated the duration of this effect, thus it was unknown whether this effect would be observed across 54 intervening trials. In contrast to existing research on Semantic NP, which featured a single prime trial distractor that was associatively or categorically related to the probe target, a list of 12 thematically related prime distractors preceded the probe target in the present experiments, in an attempt to generate an accumulation of inhibition of the critical word. This procedure was adapted from the 'DRM' paradigm developed by Deese (1959) and Roediger and McDermott (1995) to study false recall and recognition of non-presented critical words generated from attending to a list of words that were associatively related to a critical word. Statistically significant NP was not obtained in the present experiments after a lag of 54 trials in either the Identity Repetition or the Ignored Semantic conditions. The former result is inconsistent with previous research that has clearly established the existence of lasting Identity Repetition NP with a wide range of stimuli including words, consequently there is insufficient evidence to conclude that lagged Semantic NP does not occur. Unexpectedly, features of the present experiments were not conducive to the production of NP effects in general. These features and their significance for NP in general are discussed.

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