Auditory Negative Priming in Younger and Older Adults

Normal Auditory Negative Priming in Schizophrenic Patients

Performance of 28 schizophrenic patients and 28 matched controls was compared in an auditory priming task. A large auditory negative priming effect was obtained for the patients as well as for the control group, and the size of the negative priming effect was approximately the same for both groups. Under the same conditions, positive or repetition priming for the patients was enhanced compared to that of the control group. The present findings from an auditory priming task are consistent with a growing body of evidence from the visual domain showing normal rather than reduced or eliminated negative priming in schizophrenic patients.

The negative priming paradigm: An update and implications for selective attention

Negative Priming (NP) is an influential paradigm in cognitive psychology that was originally developed to measure attentional selection. Yet, up to the mid-1990s, a large number of experimental reports questioned whether the NP effect is based on attentional inhibition and/or episodic retrieval processes. In this review, we summarize findings since the mid-1990s and discuss new and old theoretical approaches to Negative Priming. We conclude that more than one process contributes to NP and that future research should analyze the conditions under which a particular process contributes to NP. Moreover, we argue that the paradigm--although it does not measure a single cognitive process alone--is still a useful tool for understanding selection in cognition. In fact, it might be a virtue of the paradigm that several cognitive processes work here together as selection in nonexperimental contexts is surely a multidimensional process. From this perspective, research on NP is relevant for all research fields analyzing selection. We therefore close our review by discussing the implications of the new evidence on NP for theories of selective attention.

Intact episodic retrieval in older adults: evidence from an auditory negative priming task

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The negative priming effect has been traditionally interpreted as the inhibitory aftereffect of distractor processing. According to inhibitory deficit theory, older adults should be more impaired by auditory distractors. Recent studies have shown that episodic retrieval processes are involved in the effect. However, so far there is no direct evidence that this is true for older adults.

METHODS

In an auditory four-alternative identification task, young adults (18-30 years), younger seniors (60-67 years), and older seniors (68-78 years) identified target sounds while ignoring distractor sounds. In ignored repetition trials, the prime distractor was repeated as the probe target, whereas there was no stimulus repetition in control trials. Reaction times and errors were analyzed.

RESULTS

Negative priming was present in all age groups. Senior groups showed increased negative priming in reaction times. All age groups revealed a comparable increase of probe errors with the former prime response in ignored repetition compared with control trials. There was no age difference in the frequency of responding with the former prime response in control trials.

CONCLUSION

An increase in prime response errors in ignored repetition trials is consistent with the involvement of episodic retrieval processes in negative priming in younger and older adults. Inconsistent with both an inhibitory account of negative priming and the inhibitory deficit theory of cognitive aging, older adults neither showed evidence of reduced negative priming nor of impaired restraint control.

On the robustness of prime response retrieval processes: evidence from auditory negative priming without probe interference

Visual negative priming has been shown to depend on the presence of probe distractors, a finding that has been traditionally seen to support the episodic retrieval model of negative priming; however, facilitated prime-to-probe contingency learning might also underlie this effect. In four sound identification experiments, the role of probe distractor interference in auditory negative priming was investigated. In each experiment, a group of participants was exposed to probe distractor interference while another group ran the task in the absence of probe distractors. Experiments 1A, 1B, and 1C varied in the extent to which fast versus accurate responding was required. Between Experiments 1 and 2, the spatial cueing of the to-be-attended ear was varied. Whereas participants switched ears from prime to probe in Experiment 1, they kept a stable attentional focus throughout Experiment 2. For trials with probe distractors, a negative priming effect was present in all experiments. For trials without probe distractors, the only ubiquitous after-effect of ignoring a prime distractor was an increase of prime response errors in ignored repetition compared to control trials, indicating that prime response retrieval processes took place. Whether negative priming beyond this error increase was found depended on the stability of the attentional focus. The findings suggest that several mechanisms underlie auditory negative priming with the only robust one being prime response retrieval.

Target localization among concurrent sound sources: no evidence for the inhibition of previous distractor responses

The visuospatial negative priming effect-that is, the slowed-down responding to a previously ignored location-is partly due to response inhibition associated with the previously ignored location (Buckolz, Goldfarb, & Khan, Perception & Psychophysics 66:837-845 2004). We tested whether response inhibition underlies spatial negative priming in the auditory modality as well. Eighty participants localized a target sound while ignoring a simultaneous distractor sound at another location. Eight possible sound locations were arranged in a semicircle around the participant. Pairs of adjacent locations were associated with the same response. On ignored repetition trials, the probe target sound was played from the same location as the previously ignored prime sound. On response control trials, prime distractor and probe target were played from different locations but were associated with the same response. On control trials, prime distractor and probe target shared neither location nor response. A response inhibition account predicts slowed-down responding when the response associated with the prime distractor has to be executed in the probe. There was no evidence of response inhibition in audition. Instead, the negative priming effect depended on whether the sound at the repeatedly occupied location changed identity between prime and probe. The latter result replicates earlier findings and supports the feature mismatching hypothesis, while the former is compatible with the assumption that response inhibition is irrelevant in auditory spatial attention.

Perceptual and motor inhibitory abilities in normal aging and Alzheimer disease (AD): a preliminary study

Deficits in inhibitory abilities are frequently observed in normal aging and AD. However, few studies have explored the generality of these deficits in a single group of participants. A battery of tasks assessing perceptual and motor inhibitory functioning was administered to young and older healthy participants (Study 1), as well as to mild Alzheimer patients (Study 2). Results did not agree with a selective impairment of motor or perceptual inhibition in either AD or normal aging but rather suggest that a decrease in cognitive resources available in working memory could explain inhibitory performance both in normal aging and AD.

Spatial and identity negative priming in audition: evidence of feature binding in auditory spatial memory

Two experiments are reported with identical auditory stimulation in three-dimensional space but with different instructions. Participants localized a cued sound (Experiment 1) or identified a sound at a cued location (Experiment 2). A distractor sound at another location had to be ignored. The prime distractor and the probe target sound were manipulated with respect to sound identity (repeated vs. changed) and location (repeated vs. changed). The localization task revealed a symmetric pattern of partial repetition costs: Participants were impaired on trials with identity-location mismatches between the prime distractor and probe target-that is, when either the sound was repeated but not the location or vice versa. The identification task revealed an asymmetric pattern of partial repetition costs: Responding was slowed down when the prime distractor sound was repeated as the probe target, but at another location; identity changes at the same location were not impaired. Additionally, there was evidence of retrieval of incompatible prime responses in the identification task. It is concluded that feature binding of auditory prime distractor information takes place regardless of whether the task is to identify or locate a sound. Instructions determine the kind of identity-location mismatch that is detected. Identity information predominates over location information in auditory memory.

Context effects in auditory implicit memory

The context effect in implicit memory is the finding that presentation of words in meaningful context reduces or eliminates repetition priming compared to words presented in isolation. Virtually all of the research on the context effect has been conducted in the visual modality but preliminary results raise the question of whether context effects are less likely in auditory priming. Context effects in the auditory modality were systematically examined in five experiments using the auditory implicit tests of word-fragment and word-stem completion. The first three experiments revealed the classical context effect in auditory priming: Words heard in isolation produced substantial priming, whereas there was little priming for the words heard in meaningful passages. Experiments 4 and 5 revealed that a meaningful context is not required for the context effect to be obtained: Words presented in an unrelated audio stream produced less priming than words presented individually and no more priming than words presented in meaningful passages. Although context effects are often explained in terms of the transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) framework, the present results are better explained by Masson and MacLeod's (2000) reduced-individuation hypothesis.

No evidence for a cue mismatch in negative priming

An experiment is reported in which the cue mismatch hypothesis of negative priming, an important novel variant of the mismatching hypothesis, was tested. A cue mismatch and a no mismatch condition were contrasted in a visual discrimination task. In the prime display of cue mismatch ignored-repetition trials, the colour of the prime distractor was different from the colour of the cue indicating the selection feature (coloured square). In probe displays, cue and repeated stimulus had the same colour. In the no mismatch condition, the visual cue was neutral in terms of colour (always black), so that there was always no cue mismatch between prime and probe displays. Contrary to the prediction of the cue mismatch hypothesis, the negative priming effect was not larger in the cue mismatch than in the no mismatch condition. The cue mismatch hypothesis must therefore be rejected. In contrast, the episodic retrieval account is consistent with the results.

Equivalent irrelevant-sound effects for old and young adults

Three experiments are reported in which a total of 182 old and 193 young adults recalled sequences of digits presented visually in silence or accompanied by office noise. In each experiment, an effect of irrelevant sound was found-that is, a reduction of serial recall due to auditory distraction. Old adults exhibited poorer serial recall than did young adults, but the irrelevant-sound effect was equivalent in both age groups. This was true even though the sound level of the irrelevant sound was adjusted to each individual's hearing capability, and the effect remained whether or not the difficulty of the serial recall task was equated across age groups. These results are problematic for the inhibitory deficit theory of cognitive aging, which predicts that old adults should be more susceptible to auditory distraction than are young adults.

Priming inhibits the right ear advantage in dichotic listening: Implications for auditory laterality

The typical finding in dichotic listening with verbal stimuli is the right ear advantage (REA), indicating a left hemisphere processing superiority, thus making this an effective tool in studying hemispheric asymmetry. It has been shown that the amplitude of the REA can be modulated by instructions to direct attention to left or right side. The current study attempted to modulate the REA by changing the dichotic listening stimulus situation. In Experiment 1, a consonant vowel (CV) syllable prime was presented binaurally briefly before the dichotic stimuli (consisting of two CVs). The prime could be the same as either the left or right ear dichotic stimulus, or it could be a different stimulus. Participants were instructed to report the CV they heard best from the dichotic syllable pair. The traditional REA was found when the prime was different from both dichotic stimuli. When the prime matched the CV in the left half of the subsequent dichotic pair, the REA was increased, while if the prime matched the right half, the REA was reduced. In order to see at which perceptual stage the modulation takes place, in Experiment 2 the prime was visual, presented on a PC screen. The same effect was seen, although the modulation of the REA was weaker. We propose that the memory trace of the prime is a source of interference, and causes cognitive control of attention to inhibit recognition of stimuli similar to recent distractors. Based on previous studies we propose that this inhibition of attention is performed by prefrontal cortical areas. Similarities to the mechanisms involved in negative priming and implications for auditory laterality studies are pointed out.

Negative Priming as a Memory Phenomenon

Abstract. Reactions to recently ignored stimuli are slowed down or more error prone when compared to reactions to control stimuli. This so-called negative priming effect has been traditionally investigated in the area of selective attention. More recent theory developments conceptualize the negative priming effect as a memory phenomenon. This review presents four models to explain the phenomenon as well as their essential empirical evidence. The review also considers several negative priming characteristics - that is stimulus modality, prime selection and prime response requirement, probe interference, stimulus repetition, aging and thought disorders, and physiological correlates. On these bases, it is concluded that only the distractor inhibition and the episodic retrieval models have survived empirical testing so far. Whereas evidence has increased that negative priming clearly obeys memory retrieval principles, the distractor inhibition model has lost much of its persuasiveness within recent years.

Evidence for episodic retrieval of inadequate prime responses in auditory negative priming

Four experiments are reported in which the mechanisms underlying auditory negative priming were investigated. In Experiments 1A and 1B, preprime-prime intervals and prime-probe intervals were manipulated. The ratio between the 2 intervals determined the size of the negative priming effect. Results are compatible with the episodic retrieval account, according to which the retrieval of inappropriate response information associated with the previous distractor slows down responding when that stimulus becomes the target. Experiment 2 tested a variant of this account, according to which the retrieval of the prime response rather than the retrieval of nonresponse information interferes with responding. Consistent with this variant, participants erroneously responded with the prime response more frequently in the ignored repetition condition than in the control condition. Experiment 3 replicated this finding and generalized it to the visual modality. The authors conclude that the retrieval of the inappropriate prime response is a determinant of the negative priming phenomenon.