Biomedical subjects

James E H Bright

Publications and source records attributed to James E H Bright.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

The subliminal mere exposure effect does not generalize to structurally related stimuli.

R.F. Bornstein (1994) questioned whether subliminal mere exposure effects might generalize to structurally related stimuli, thereby providing evidence for the existence of implicit learning. Two experiments examined this claim using letter string stimuli constructed according to the rules of an artificial grammar. Experiment 1 demonstrated that brief, masked exposure to grammatical strings impaired recognition but failed to produce a mere exposure effect on novel structurally related strings seen at test. Experiment 2 replicated this result but also demonstrated that a reliable mere exposure effect could be obtained, provided the same grammatical strings were presented at test. The results suggest that the structural relationship between training and test items prevents the mere exposure effect when participants are unaware of the exposure status of stimuli, and therefore provide no evidence for the existence of implicit learning.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Evidence against hyperspecificity in implicit invariant learning.

Four experiments examined the claim that cross-format transfer in invariant learning is reliant solely on the presence of repetition structure in study and test strings (Stadler, Warren, & Lesch, 2000). Experiments 1, 2, and 3 used strings with no repetitions and found significant cross-format transfer in combination with a non-significant transfer decrement--no significant difference between same- and changed-format conditions. Further investigation of the basis of the role of repetition structure revealed an emphasis on the perceptual salience of test stimuli (Experiment 4). Our results contrast with those of Stadler et al. and suggest that under the conditions we employed invariant learning is not highly sensitive to changes in the perceptual characteristics of stimuli and therefore is inaccurately described as hyperspecific. We suggest that the term hyperspecific be reserved for cases in which minor format changes result in significant performance impairments--for example, typographical effects in implicit memory.

Adult↗