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Sarah Guy

Publications and source records attributed to Sarah Guy.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

The locus and modulation of the location negative priming effect.

Responding to the location of a target is slower when it appears at a recent distractor location [ignored-repetition (IR) trial] than when it arises at a new position [control (CO) trial], defining the location negative priming (NP) effect. On IR trials, both the distractor location and response are from the prior trial, and the locus question asks whether the delayed responding that arises is caused by the reused distractor position (i.e., a location locus) or the need to execute a distractor output (i.e., a response locus). A location NP procedure was used, incorporating a many:1 location-to-response mapping design, along with a response cue on some trials. A response locus for the location NP effect was indicated. Distractor-turned-target responses took longer to initiate than new outputs (many:1 paradigm), and valid response cues reduced distractor response interference and the location NP effect. Importantly, a possible S-R compatibility problem within the many:1 S-R paradigm was not supported.

Conditioning, Operant↗

Can the location negative priming process operate in a proactive manner?

The location negative priming (NP) effect refers to the fact that the processing of a current target stimulus (probe trial) is delayed when it appears at a location that has recently contained a distractor event (prime trial), relative to when it occurs at a previously unoccupied position. One view is that the process causing the NP effect involves the inhibition of the internal representation of the prime-distractor event, and that the future processing of target stimuli that involve this event are prolonged because this distractor inhibition is persistent. In this study, we examined the possibility that the NP process (inhibition) could act proactively; specifically asking whether inhibition could be allocated to a location merely predicted to hold a future distractor event. To do this, we cued the probe distractor's location using an otherwise traditional location NP paradigm. No evidence of a proactive NP process was obtained. Probe-trial target latency was the same whether it appeared at the cued distractor location or at a new location, but was delayed when it occupied the prime-distractor location (NP effect). The location NP process is seemingly a reactive one, applying inhibition only when an actual distractor is present, much as past theories have implied.

Attention↗

The influence of distractor-only prime trials on the location negative priming mechanism.

Two experiments were conducted that examined the influence of distractor-only prime trials on the "location" negative priming (NP) effect. In all experiments, the probe trial always lacked a distractor. We showed that the predictable absence of a probe distractor caused the elimination of the location NP effect when the prime trial contained both a target and a distractor event (T + D-->T), but not when the prime contained only a to-be-ignored distractor event (D-->T) (Milliken, Tipper, Houghton, & Lupianez, 2000). The preservation of the NP effect seen with the distractor-only prime trials (D-->T) was not the result of its lacking a prime-trial selection, nor was it the consequence of its representing a higher level of episodic similarity than the T + D-->T condition. Finally, the location NP effect observed for the D-->T condition is seemingly consistent with the view that location NP and the inhibition-of-return effects share a common underlying process (Milliken et al., 2000).

Adult↗