Perceptual priming tasks

From Psy3241

What is Perceptual Priming?

Perceptual priming refers to activating particular associations in memory just before a

responsive behavior takes place. In other words, it is the method used to get the mind

ready to respond in a particular manner. One important property of priming is that there

tends to be a higher positive correlation when the priming and stimulus presentation

occurs in the same sensory mode. For example, a visual priming stimulus is given, then

the presentation of a visual stimulus will produce a better performance than a auditory

stimulus.

In a sense, perceptual priming can be used to synthesize a participant to the presentation

of the same or similar stimulus at a later time. If participants read a list of words that

includes the word table and then given a list of prefixes and asked to write the first word

they think of, they will write the word table when the stimulus prefix tab is presented.

Participants may also show priming effects on the word chair when primed with the word

table due to the strong relationship between the two objects.

Importance for neuropsychology

It is important to consider that amnesic and blind sight patients show signs of a

perceptual priming effect even though they have no recollection of seeing the priming

stimulus. This could also be true for normal participants if a priming stimulus is flashed

rapidly so that the participant is unaware of the priming before an actual stimulus

presentation. The fact that the visual information gets into the brain without the

conscience experience of seeing the priming stimulus hints at different pathways for

visual stimuli in the brain.

References

Wiggs, et al. (1998). Properties and mechanisms of perceptual priming. Cognitive neuroscience. 8(227-233)

Bowers et al. (2003). In Search of Perceptual Priming in a Semantic Classification Task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Vol. 29, No. 6, 1248–1255.