Inhibibition Of Return & Negative Priming

Question 1

INTRO

Answer 1

• 3 attentional abilities
• anterior attention system
• invalid cue trials

Question 2

Three attentional abilities

Answer 2

Posner & Peterson (1990)
Function of posterior attention system (exogenous)

Engagement- focusing attention on new stimulus
- pulvinar nucleus

Disengagement- withdraw attention from stimulus
- parietal lobes & posterior parietal region

Shifting- transfer attention from stimulus to another
- superior colliculus

Question 3

Anterior attention system

Answer 3

Corbetta & Shulman (2002)
Resembles goal-directed (endogenous) system

Involved in coordinating the different aspects of visual attention

Question 4

Invalid cue trials

Answer 4

Covert orienting task

Disengagement requires inhibition of cued object/location to enable reorienting attention to target location

Causes slower RT

Question 5

3 ATTENTIONAL ABILITIES

Answer 5

• Engagement
• Disengagement
• Shifting
• Evaluation

Question 6

Engagement: Ward (2002)

Answer 6

Patient with damage to pulvinar nucleus

Could identify identity or letter correctly but not colour

Suggests a difficulty in effective attentional engagement with target letter

Question 7

Engagement: Laberge (1990)

Answer 7

PET indicates increased activation in pulvinar nucleus when pp ignored given stimulus

Suggests PN is involved in directing attention to significant stimulus & preventing attention being focused on unwanted stimulus

Question 8

Disengagement: Schindler (2009)

Answer 8

Patients with neglect have problems of disengagement when shifting between objects rather than within objects

Suggests it’s hard to disengage from objects but not necessarily from given point in space

Patients with simultanagnosia (only one object perceived at a time) have problems of disengagement (sticky fixations due to restricted attention field)

Question 9

Shifting; Posner (1985)

Answer 9

Patients with damage to midbrain area have problems making voluntary eye movements

Question 10

Evaluation of 3-abilities approach

Answer 10

• Oversimplifies attentional processes
• PN found to be involved in both engagement & shifting
• Research on neglect patients has practical implications- suggests they’ve damaged ventral attention network leading to impaired functioning of undamaged intact dorsal attention network- training programmes designed to reduce neglect symptoms shed light on underlying process

Question 11

INHIBITION OF RETURN

Answer 11

• IOR
• Posner & Cohen (1984)
• Lei (2012)

Question 12

Inhibition of return

Answer 12

Reduced probability of attention to return to a previously attended location or object

Slower RT when going back to previously attended location

Both object & location based

Consists of inhibition of perceptual processes (reduction of visual processing for cued targets) & IOR

Associated with exogenous capture of attention

Question 13

Posner & Cohen (1984)

Answer 13

If delay between cue & target <300ms- cued target (valid cues) detected faster than non-cued target (invalid cues)

If delay >300ms- cued target detected slower than non-cued targets (IOR)

Suggests that cues speed up cued target detection only if it will appear no >300ms before target

Happens because attention has enough time to disengage from cued location

Question 14

Lei (2012)

Answer 14

The distribution activation pattern of broader areas for peripheral stimuli suggests that more neural resources invested in processing info from peripheral visual field

Could mean that peripheral stimuli are biologically & ecologically more important for humanity survival compared to central stimuli

Question 15

NEGATIVE PRIMING

Answer 15

• Negative priming
• Tipper (1985)
• DIT
• Evaluation
• ERT
• Evaluation

Question 16

Negative priming

Answer 16

Longer RT when distractor object in prime trial becomes target in subsequent probe trial

Response to an object previously ignored

Question 17

Tipper (1985)

Answer 17

If ignored object in prime display same as subsequent probe- naming latencies impaired- NP

Suggests internal representations of ignored object may become associated with inhibition during selection

Thus, subsequent probe object requiring these inhibited representations is delayed

Question 18

Tipper (1985): Semantic NP

Answer 18

Priming dogs with cat (semantically related)

NP & SNP were significantly slower than control & was no significant difference between them

Selection operates at semantic level as well

This means that ignored stimuli can cause NP even when replaced by semantically-related image

Question 19

Distractor inhibition theory: explaining NP

Answer 19

Inhibition causes by distractor is complementary to attention induced by target stimulus

Distraction in prime display causes slower RT to target stimulus in probe trial

Persisting inhibition drives distractor below baseline activation even after offset of target stimulus

Stronger distractor requires more inhibition, causing stronger inhibitory rebound & prolonged RT

DIT explains larger NP effect by stronger activation & thus more inhibition for ignored stimuli

Question 20

Evaluation of DIT

Answer 20

• Explains the ignored stimulus salience effect
• Doesn’t explain why NP depends on interval between prime & probe- if representation of distractor object is inhibited, impact of inhibition should be strongest immediately after selection (as inhibition assumed to sekar with time)- although there’s general trend of NP to decay with increasing time between prime & probe

Question 21

Episodic Retrieval theory: explaining NP

Answer 21

Neill & Valdes (1992)
If task executed over & over, memories of past trials more used in current trial

NP occurs when memory of distractor in prime episode is retrieved disingenuous probe processing causing hampering interference

Retrieval is triggered by similarity of prime & probe episodes

When distractor of prime becomes target in subsequent probe, retrieved & perceived info in conflict

Resolving the conflict is time consuming & causes slower RT (NP)

Main determinants of strength of retrieval are recency of memory & strength of memory representation of former trial

Question 22

ERT Evaluation

Answer 22

• Supported by empirical evidence- negative correlation between response stimulus interval between prime & probe (recent effect) & NP effect (Neill & Valdes, 1992)
• Doesn’t explain the semantic NP- the absence of perceptual similarity should prevent any retrieval to occur- thus predicting the absence of any priming effects
• Doesn’t explain why response is facilitated when interval prime-probe is very short- difficult to explain in terms of episodic-retrieval framework