Perceive-decide-act, perceive-decide-act: how abstract is repetition-related decision learning?

Full Abstract

Recent encounters with a stimulus often facilitate or "prime" future responses to the same or similar stimuli. However, studies are inconclusive as to whether changing the response that is required attenuates priming only for identical stimuli, or also for categorically related items. In 2 object priming experiments, the authors show that priming was eliminated if the initial decision associated with a stimulus changed on a later trial. This disruption of priming extended to perceptually and conceptually similar object exemplars and was found even when the classification tasks were uncorrelated with one another, many other items had intervened, and after only 1 prior encounter with a given stimulus. These outcomes are consistent with the rapid and automatic binding of a stimulus with a response into an episodic "instance" or "event file" and demonstrate that repetition-related decision learning is not hyperspecific but generalizes to new stimuli. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Author information

Author/s: Denkinger, Benjamin (B); Koutstaal, Wilma (W);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-May; vol 35 (issue 3) : pp 742-56

Dates: Created 2009/04/21; Completed 2009/06/26;

PMID: 19379047, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/26/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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