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This dissertation aims to investigate the correlations of visual evoked potentials during the experimental process of serial passive affective priming. The aim of this dissertation is to identify partial processes of affective perception, which are influenced by relations to previous affective priming stimulation. The research is designed as a laboratory EEG experiment, which uses affective priming techniques, particularly its sequential passive multimodal (auditory-visual) variation. The research experimentally manipulates emotional characteristics of stimuli that are constructed on the basis of the dimensional theory. As a starting dimension, arousal was chosen that is equivalent to psychic activation connected to reactions to stimuli. The study was carried out in the PF JČU neurological laboratory using a 64 channel EEG Biosemi Active II. Probands was selected from the JČU students, whose brain electrical activity was measured during an exposure to affective stimuli from international emotional elicitation databases. Records from 29 people were used. The independent variable used was the variation of priming and arousal characteristics of the priming stimulus from the affective melodies database (Eerola &Vuoskoski, 2010) and the arousal characteristics of a visual stimuli (Marchewka et al., 2014). Visual perception is the most explored ERP process, therefore the differences between the results of this dissertation study and comparative studies can be the basis for interpreting the mechanism of contextual affective transmission. Time progress and activation reactions are modulated based on experimental conditions and the dependent variables are the differences of latency and amplitude of individual components of evoked potentials, which represent partial psychological processes. The use of sound as priming stimulus together with a high interstimulus interval decreases the conflict between perceptual processes in selective attention. The differences in processes of visual perception according to affective arousal characteristics of stimuli suggest a parietally increased early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potentials (LPP) of high-arousal stimuli in comparison to low-arousal stimuli. Signs of EPN manifest as indicators for prioritization of attention in comparison with actively motivating stimuli. The priming effect manifested in P1 and N1 components occipitoparietally and in N2 centroparietally, which suggest stronger negativity of EPN in the case of previous priming. LPP increase for the priming condition was there only for high-arousal stimuli. The cause for higher activation for priming conditions in P1 and N1 is unknown, it is a case of premature latency for possible explanation using the evaluation mechanism. The results showcase the influence of conflict between processes of attention or the alternative interpretations of affective priming based on the influence of context on the formation of evaluative conclusions. The priming effects in LPP show a lower later parietal activation of primed stimuli which can be connected to their previous increased activation as a part of early and medium latency component.

Foi estudado o efeito de priming negativo associado à supressão do distrator palavra-cor de Stroop (Estudo 1), à supressão do local (Estudo 2) e à identidade do distrator (Estudos 3 e 4). No Estudo 1 constatou-se que a prática prévia em palavras-cor eliminou o efeito da ordem das condições experimentais sobre o índice de priming negativo. No Estudo 2, o efeito de priming negativo foi observado somente no hemicampo direito. A execução concorrente de uma tarefa verbal eliminou os efeitos de lateralidade, mas o efeito de priming negativo permaneceu significante. Estes achados são discutidos em termos de processamento interhemisférico sob condições que exigiriam maior controle da atenção. Os estudos 3 e 4 apresentam tarefas de comparação de pares de dígitos. A versão de papel e lápis da tarefa de comparação de dígitos permitiu avaliar de maneira simples e rápida o efeito de priming negativo. A versão computadorizada, revelou uma interação entre os componentes espacial e de identidade. Ambos os grupos de adultos jovens e idosos revelaram priming negativo nas tarefas de Stroop e de localização espacial. Nas tarefas de identificação do alvo somente os adultos jovens mostraram efeito de priming negativo. Os presentes achados são consistentes com a proposta de mecanismos inibitórios diferenciados na supressão da identidade e de localização espacial. / The development of sensitive and simple tests for the assessment of the negative priming effect has theoretical relevance to the elucidation of selective attention models, and also practical and potential clinical implications. The negative priming effect has been regarded as an index of inhibitory attentional processing and was proposed for the detection of syndromes that involve cognitive impairment. Diminished negative priming was reported in studies of individual differences, developmental stage, and clinical populations. However, evidences suggest that tasks requiring responses to the color feature, location or object identity of the stimuli may comprise distinct types of negative priming tasks. The following studies presents data for computerized and paper-and-pencil tasks to examine negative priming for Stroop color-word, location and identity distractors. All four studies take into account aging effects across the tasks. For comparisons between age-groups, proportional performance scores (ratio) were used. A first study employed a reading-sheet Stroop-color-word task, in which the participant is asked to name the colors of the ink in which words with incongruent color names have been printed. Color-word interference is indicated by increased time to complete the conflicting color-word condition compared with a nonconflicting condition with patches of color or strings of Xs. The greater strength of the interference, when the target ink-color of the present stimulus is the distracting color name of the previous stimulus, is attributed to the negative priming effect. A pilot experiment showed that the order of the list conditions containing unrelated and related stimuli affected the negative priming index. The analysis of data demonstrated that a practice trial in color naming of conflicting color-words before the color-word conditions eliminated the effect of the order of the lists. In addition, there was a reliable Stroop reverse interference after practice in color naming, as indicated by the fact that the incongruent color-ink affected post-test word-reading, whereas it had no effect in the pretest word-reading. With practice procedure, older and younger subjects did not differ in their proportional interference scores, whereas the negative priming and reverse effects were increased for older adults. Study 2 examined the negative-priming effect in a spatial localization task under single- and dual-task conditions. The task required the subject to detect the location of a target letter, ‘O’, while ignoring a distractor letter, ‘X’, when it was present. Significant negative-priming effects were observed under both task conditions, with increased response times for trials in which target location had matched the location of the distractor on the preceding. The magnitude of the negative priming effect was not different for older and younger adults. The performance in the single-task condition showed laterality effects with a right visual field advantage for control and target-alone trials, but not for related trials. In consequence, in the single-task condition, negative priming was observed only for targets displayed in the right hemifield. However, a concurrent digit span task, with a load level that had shown no affect on the dual-task coordination capacity, eliminated the laterality effects, but the negative priming effect remained. These results are considered as neuropsychological evidence that interhemispheric processes may operate under more controlled conditions. Studies 3 and 4 examined negative priming by using an identity-based task that required participants to select the greater of two-digits display or the digit that was paired with an asterisk. Study 3 presents data for a computerized version of the task. Negative-priming was expressed as a slowing in the time to name the digit that had been ignored in the preceding trial, compared to control trials with consecutive targets and distractors always different. Analysis of data revealed that negative priming was reliable only for younger adults, and only when target probe and distractor prime appeared at the same location, suggesting that suppression for location of distractor was underpinning the negative priming effect. However, response latencies for the control trials were facilitated when the target probe and the distractor prime shared the same location. Thus, local suppression affected negative priming for attended distractors with a cost in the response latency for ignored-repetition trials and with a gain in response latency for control trials when the locus of target-probe and distractor-prime was the same. In contrast, older adults’ performance showed local suppression for both ignored-repetition and control trials. This may explain the lack of negative priming for older adults in the digit-comparison task. Study 4 presents data for a new paper-and-pencil version of the digit-comparison task to obtain a practical measure of negative priming that do not require cumbersome technical equipment. In that task, subjects were asked to circle digits that were paired with asterisks and the greater of two digits in a series of digit pairs listed on a sheet of paper. For younger participants, but not for older participants, the time to complete the sheet with related pairs was slower than for unrelated pairs. In addition, the reduced scores of negative priming in older adults were associated with the lowest sustained attention scores from Toulouse-Piéron test. These results suggest that older adults’ performance in the digit-comparison task were mainly related to flexibility and sustained attentional scores, and the lower sustained attentional coefficient seemed to be the best predictor of diminished or reversed negative priming in older adults. Younger adults showed reliable negative priming across all tasks. In contrast, older adults showed negative priming in Stroop and spatial tasks, when compared with younger subjects performance, but reduced negative priming in identity suppression tasks. The findings are consistent with neurophysiological and behavioural evidence that identity and location suppressing may rely on separate inhibitory mechanisms, and that not all of these processes are weakened by factors associated with age.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka priming med exempels påverkan på skapelsers kreativitet. Effekterna av priming skulle testas i formen av egenskapspriming såväl som konceptuell priming och mätas utifrån både en användbarhetsaspekt och en originalitetsaspekt. Ett delsyfte var också att undersöka sambandet mellan intresset för att ta fram en skapelse och en skapelses grad av originalitet samt användbarhet. Primingeffekterna prövades genom ett experiment där 36 studenter delades in i 3 grupper som fick i uppgift att ta fram IT-lösningar för kollektivtrafiken. 2 av grupperna primades med var sitt exempel på hög originalitet respektive hög användbarhet. Effekterna av egenskapspriming undersöktes sedan genom en jämförelse mellan grupperna över hur stor andel av de framtagna lösningarna som innehöll egenskaper från exemplen. För att undersöka effekterna av konceptuell primingen gjordes en jämförelse av originaliteten och användbarhet hos dessa gruppers lösningar jämfört med de framtagna av en kontrollgrupp utan tillgång till exempel. Lösningarnas originalitet och användbarhet bedömdes av en expertgrupp bestående av forskare inom kreativitet och branschaktiva inom området. Denna expertgrupp bedömde även sitt intresse för att ta fram de olika lösningarna. Denna bedömning tillsammans med de två tidigare användes för att undersöka sambandet mellan intresset för en lösning och lösningens originalitet respektive användbarhet. Resultatet av studien visade på ett signifikant positivt samband hos båda grupperna av bedömare mellan en lösnings användbarhet och intresset för att ta fram lösningen. Ett signifikant positivt samband gällande en lösnings originalitet och intresset för denne kunde dock endast uppvisas hos forskare medan de branschaktiva visade på ett osignifikant negativt samband mellan de två. Resultatet av egenskapspriming och konceptuell priming visade inte överlag på några signifikanta skillnader mellan grupperna. Studien anses vara av vikt då den visar på hur en ökning av kreativiteten på skapelser inom en organisation inte behöver betyda en ökning av organisationens kreativitet p.g.a. ointresset i att omfamna och satsa på dessa lösningar. Vidare visar studien på hur primingeffekter är svåra att skapa i situationer som i högre grad ska efterlikna de i verkliga livet och hur vidare forskning behövs på området för att kartlägga variabler som påverkar priming och primings begränsningar. / The aim of the study was to examine priming with example’s impact on ideas creativity, regarding usability and novelty both as a result of targeting priming and conceptual priming. A subsidiary aim was to examine the relationship between an idea’s degree of originality and usefulness and the interest in pursuing the idea. The effects of priming were tried in an experiment involving 36 students who were asked to develop IT solutions for public transport. The students were randomly divided into two experimental groups and one control group. The members of the experimental group were primed with an example with high originality respectively usability. The solutions were given two indexes on how many of the properties of respective examples were found in the solutions. Their degree of originality and usefulness were also assessed by a group of experts. This group also assessed their interest in the respective solution. The study revealed a significant positive correlation between a solution's usability and interest of the solution. A positive significant correlation could also be seen between a solution's originality and the interest of the solution, but only in the group of analysts consisting of scientists. Among the industry-experts the results instead pointed toward a negative relationship between originality and interest, although a non-significant relationship. There were no significant differences between the group’s solutions regarding their degree of originality and usefulness nor the frequency in which features from the example was found in the solutions. The study is of importance because it shows how increases in the creativity of solutions produced by individuals and employees not necessarily lead to an increase in the creativity of an organization, due to lack of interest in embracing and invest in these creative solutions. The study also reflects the difficulties in transferring priming effects discovered in a lab environment to situations that more closely resembles those in real life. Further research is necessary to broaden the knowledge regarding variables that affects priming and the limits between which priming exist.

Letter position plays an important role in lexical access. But are some positions more important than the others? Findings from numerous studies support the notion that in lexical access, initial letters produce strongest activation, which weakens towards the end of the word. In order to create a metric for computing the activation produced by each letter position in a correctly spelled word versus a word in which some or all letters are transposed, the formula for calculating a word's orthographic match coefficient (OMC) was developed and tested. Utilizing the masked priming paradigm and a lexical decision task, Experiments 1-5 test the accuracy and reliability of the OMC predictions, and look at neighborhood density in conjunction with different types of letter movement. Results from these experiments provide empirical support for the OMC as a reliable predictor of priming that involves transposed letters, and offer insight into possible mechanisms of word recognition.

Foi estudado o efeito de priming negativo associado à supressão do distrator palavra-cor de Stroop (Estudo 1), à supressão do local (Estudo 2) e à identidade do distrator (Estudos 3 e 4). No Estudo 1 constatou-se que a prática prévia em palavras-cor eliminou o efeito da ordem das condições experimentais sobre o índice de priming negativo. No Estudo 2, o efeito de priming negativo foi observado somente no hemicampo direito. A execução concorrente de uma tarefa verbal eliminou os efeitos de lateralidade, mas o efeito de priming negativo permaneceu significante. Estes achados são discutidos em termos de processamento interhemisférico sob condições que exigiriam maior controle da atenção. Os estudos 3 e 4 apresentam tarefas de comparação de pares de dígitos. A versão de papel e lápis da tarefa de comparação de dígitos permitiu avaliar de maneira simples e rápida o efeito de priming negativo. A versão computadorizada, revelou uma interação entre os componentes espacial e de identidade. Ambos os grupos de adultos jovens e idosos revelaram priming negativo nas tarefas de Stroop e de localização espacial. Nas tarefas de identificação do alvo somente os adultos jovens mostraram efeito de priming negativo. Os presentes achados são consistentes com a proposta de mecanismos inibitórios diferenciados na supressão da identidade e de localização espacial. / The development of sensitive and simple tests for the assessment of the negative priming effect has theoretical relevance to the elucidation of selective attention models, and also practical and potential clinical implications. The negative priming effect has been regarded as an index of inhibitory attentional processing and was proposed for the detection of syndromes that involve cognitive impairment. Diminished negative priming was reported in studies of individual differences, developmental stage, and clinical populations. However, evidences suggest that tasks requiring responses to the color feature, location or object identity of the stimuli may comprise distinct types of negative priming tasks. The following studies presents data for computerized and paper-and-pencil tasks to examine negative priming for Stroop color-word, location and identity distractors. All four studies take into account aging effects across the tasks. For comparisons between age-groups, proportional performance scores (ratio) were used. A first study employed a reading-sheet Stroop-color-word task, in which the participant is asked to name the colors of the ink in which words with incongruent color names have been printed. Color-word interference is indicated by increased time to complete the conflicting color-word condition compared with a nonconflicting condition with patches of color or strings of Xs. The greater strength of the interference, when the target ink-color of the present stimulus is the distracting color name of the previous stimulus, is attributed to the negative priming effect. A pilot experiment showed that the order of the list conditions containing unrelated and related stimuli affected the negative priming index. The analysis of data demonstrated that a practice trial in color naming of conflicting color-words before the color-word conditions eliminated the effect of the order of the lists. In addition, there was a reliable Stroop reverse interference after practice in color naming, as indicated by the fact that the incongruent color-ink affected post-test word-reading, whereas it had no effect in the pretest word-reading. With practice procedure, older and younger subjects did not differ in their proportional interference scores, whereas the negative priming and reverse effects were increased for older adults. Study 2 examined the negative-priming effect in a spatial localization task under single- and dual-task conditions. The task required the subject to detect the location of a target letter, ‘O’, while ignoring a distractor letter, ‘X’, when it was present. Significant negative-priming effects were observed under both task conditions, with increased response times for trials in which target location had matched the location of the distractor on the preceding. The magnitude of the negative priming effect was not different for older and younger adults. The performance in the single-task condition showed laterality effects with a right visual field advantage for control and target-alone trials, but not for related trials. In consequence, in the single-task condition, negative priming was observed only for targets displayed in the right hemifield. However, a concurrent digit span task, with a load level that had shown no affect on the dual-task coordination capacity, eliminated the laterality effects, but the negative priming effect remained. These results are considered as neuropsychological evidence that interhemispheric processes may operate under more controlled conditions. Studies 3 and 4 examined negative priming by using an identity-based task that required participants to select the greater of two-digits display or the digit that was paired with an asterisk. Study 3 presents data for a computerized version of the task. Negative-priming was expressed as a slowing in the time to name the digit that had been ignored in the preceding trial, compared to control trials with consecutive targets and distractors always different. Analysis of data revealed that negative priming was reliable only for younger adults, and only when target probe and distractor prime appeared at the same location, suggesting that suppression for location of distractor was underpinning the negative priming effect. However, response latencies for the control trials were facilitated when the target probe and the distractor prime shared the same location. Thus, local suppression affected negative priming for attended distractors with a cost in the response latency for ignored-repetition trials and with a gain in response latency for control trials when the locus of target-probe and distractor-prime was the same. In contrast, older adults’ performance showed local suppression for both ignored-repetition and control trials. This may explain the lack of negative priming for older adults in the digit-comparison task. Study 4 presents data for a new paper-and-pencil version of the digit-comparison task to obtain a practical measure of negative priming that do not require cumbersome technical equipment. In that task, subjects were asked to circle digits that were paired with asterisks and the greater of two digits in a series of digit pairs listed on a sheet of paper. For younger participants, but not for older participants, the time to complete the sheet with related pairs was slower than for unrelated pairs. In addition, the reduced scores of negative priming in older adults were associated with the lowest sustained attention scores from Toulouse-Piéron test. These results suggest that older adults’ performance in the digit-comparison task were mainly related to flexibility and sustained attentional scores, and the lower sustained attentional coefficient seemed to be the best predictor of diminished or reversed negative priming in older adults. Younger adults showed reliable negative priming across all tasks. In contrast, older adults showed negative priming in Stroop and spatial tasks, when compared with younger subjects performance, but reduced negative priming in identity suppression tasks. The findings are consistent with neurophysiological and behavioural evidence that identity and location suppressing may rely on separate inhibitory mechanisms, and that not all of these processes are weakened by factors associated with age.

It has been demonstrated that in early visual word processing, monolingual speakers process morphologically complex words in terms of their constituent morphemes (e.g., hunt+er), irrespective of the semantic relationship between stem and suffix (e.g., corn+er) (e.g., Longtin, Segui, & Halle, 2003; Rastle, Davis, & New, 2004). However, research into bilingual morphological processing has produced support for and against the notion that bilinguals process morphologically complex words akin to monolingual speakers (Clahsen, Felser, Neubauer, Sato, & Silva, 2010; Diependaele, Dufiabeitia, Morris, & Keuleers, 2011). The experiments in this work explored the nature of bilingual morphological processing in early visual word recognition, by means of masked priming. Using prime target pairs sharing a morphological a nd semantic (e.g., hunter-hunt), only a pseudo-morphological (e.g., corner-corn), and neither morphological nor semantic relationship (e.g., yellow-yell), Experiments 1 and 2 explored morphological priming in English for English L1 - German L2 and German L1 - English L2 speakers, respectively. The design was expanded to German, testing bilingual German L1 and L2 speakers in Experiments 3 and 4. Results showed similar trends with consistent priming across all conditions for bilingual English L1 and L2 speakers, but different priming magnitudes for bilingual German L1 and L2 speakers. Using primes ranging from very low to very high frequencies, the relative contribution of prime frequency with respect to these findings was explored first for native English speakers in Experiment 5, and expanded to English L2 speakers in Experiment 6. Although prime frequency affected reaction latencies in both monolingual and bilingual speakers, Experiment 7, a re-test of Experiment 1 with monolingual speakers with no knowledge of a foreign language, indicated that it may be the sound command of another language that influences morphological processing in the participants' native language. The results are discussed in relation to the current literature and models of bilingual word processing.

Kin Fai Ellick, Wong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-83).

In two experiments the Weighted Salience Model (WSM) of conceptual combination was examined. Several of the hypotheses set forth in the WSM were evaluated, including the importance of salience of constituent features, differential interpretation strategies based on similarity, an initial reliance on the modifier as opposed to the head, and a context effect of salience reorganization. Results confirmed that the hierarchy of output dominance within constituent features was important in determining features in final combinations. Additionally, similar pairs were defined with property interpretations more frequently than were dissimilar pairs, and dissimilar pairs were defined with relation interpretations more frequently than were similar pairs. Context effects were demonstrated through the finding that target features were found more often in primed than unprimed pairs. The hypothesis of modifier superiority was not confirmed. These findings indicate that the WSM adds to the current understanding of conceptual combination through a reliance on output dominance and the importance of context. Despite these strengths, changes to the WSM may be necessary if future studies fail to support the importance of the modifier over the head noun.

Voters are exposed to vastly different campaign environments based on their geographic location. This results in heterogeneity in the intensity and communicative content that voters are exposed to across a nationally representative sample. The present analysis seeks to leverage this variance in communication environments facing voters to better capture the effects of campaign priming. I find that when taking account of the communications that voters face, the effects of priming are clearer, but also more complex. / text