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Repeating a single-prime stimulus as a target to respond to usually facilitates responses. However, sometimes, prime repetition slows the responses and produces the single-prime negative priming effect. In this study, the distractor set hypothesis was proposed as a mechanism of attentional control that can contribute toward single-prime negative priming. In Experiments 1a-1d, an integrated Stroop task was used. The results showed that the prime produced negative priming only when it matched the form of the competing distractors. A separate Stroop task was used in Experiments 2 and 3 and a flanker task was used in Experiments 4a and 4b. In both tasks, the results suggested that a prime produced negative priming when the location of the prime matched that of the distractors. In Experiment 5, alternative explanations including the effects of the prime-to-distractor similarity and the target set were examined. The results revealed that the distractor set, rather than the target set and the similarity between the prime and distractor, could better account for the negative priming effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study reported here addressed the behavioral and EEG correlates of the effects of dual images used as primers for a lexical decision task to seek evidence for inhibition theory or episode retrieval theory as explanations of the negative priming effect. At the behavioral level, conscious meanings of dual images were found to produce positive priming effects, while unconscious meanings produced negative priming effects. EEG correlates of these effects were identified in the anterior-central regions of the brain. Thus, a decrease in the amplitude of the N400 component served as a correlate of positive priming, while a decrease in the amplitude of the late positive complex was a correlate of negative priming. Both components are considered in the literature as indicators of episode retrieval, a process associated with memory. The fact that the priming effect of unconscious meanings of dual images at the psychophysiological level is expressed in terms of memory phenomena leads to the conclusion that subjects remember meanings that they did not notice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Level-2 visual perspective taking (VPT) refers to the ability to understand that other people may see objects differently. Using the number verification task, previous studies have found egocentric and altercentric biases in level-2 VPT. However, the cognitive mechanism of these biases is still unclear. Thus, the present study used the adapted negative priming (NP) paradigm to investigate the role of inhibitory control in overcoming these biases in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we found egocentric bias and observed the NP effect for children and adults. However, there was no significant difference between children and adults in the magnitude of the NP effect, indicating that when children can overcome the egocentric bias in the level-2 VPT, their inhibitory control ability is comparable to that of adults. In Experiment 2, altercentric bias was confirmed in children and adults. However, we did not observe the NP effect in children. These results suggest that children may not have sufficient cognitive capacity to suppress others' perspectives, or may not experience interference by others' perspectives and thus have no need to inhibit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study, participants made a verbal naming response to a prime target word flanked by a distractor word, followed by a lexical decision response to a probe target word or nonword, flanked by a distractor word. By tracking potential priming effects from having either the prime target become the probe target (attended repetition condition) or the prime distractor become the probe target (ignored repetition condition), consistent positive and negative priming effects were obtained. These results broaden our understanding that stimulus-response binding does not need to be gradually learned (Henson et al., 2014). Rather, it can be formed from a single S-R pairing.

Prior work has found a negative priming effect for a sequence, and more purely time-based negative priming has also been identified. Although sequential effects have been reported with both visual and auditory stimuli, only visual stimuli have been used in experiments examining purely temporal negative priming. In this article, sequential and temporal negative priming are compared across modalities. Prime trials included random presentation of a target (auditory bird chirp or visual X), a non-target (auditory dog bark or visual O), and two neutral stimuli (auditory computer beeps or empty visual boxes). Probe trials included random presentation of the target and three neutral stimuli. Participants indicated the temporal location of the target. On 88% of the trials, participants (N = 119 in Experiment 1; N = 65 in Experiment 2) indicated the location of the non-target stimulus from the prime trial. Results showed an increase in response time when the temporal location of the probe's target was the same as the location of the non-target stimulus from the prime trial, but this only occurred when the prime was presented more slowly. Experiment 2 tested, and falsified, the hypothesis that a fixed amount of time on the prime is necessary to bind features of the non-target stimulus with temporal and sequential positions. Together, these data show that sequential and temporal negative priming effects generalise across modality and that relative rather than fixed timing is critical. Implications for theories of negative priming are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research shows that women outperform men in the classic Stroop task, but it is not known why this difference occurs. There are currently two main hypotheses: (1) women have enhanced verbal abilities, and (2) women show greater inhibition. In two Stroop experiments, we examined the Inhibition hypothesis by adopting a procedure, often used in visual cognition paradigms, that induces a particular inhibitory component. So-called Negative Priming occurs when a distracting non-target stimulus on one trial becomes the target on the following trial. Results from our experiments showed that the degree to which this type of inhibition occurs within the Stroop effect is no different for men and women. This was the case irrespective of whether participants made a vocal response (Experiment 1; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women) or a manual response (Experiment 2; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women). These results do not therefore support the Inhibition hypothesis. We additionally review findings from a range of paradigms that can be seen as indexing the different components required for the Stroop task (e.g., distractor suppression). This review suggests that the sex effect is due to superior color naming ability in women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many learners often commit systematic errors in mathematics tasks because they rely on heuristics even when they are not applicable. This phenomenon is known as the heuristic bias, and it has been found in children, adolescents, and educated adults. However, it is still unclear whether mathematics teachers are still affected by heuristic biases and whether they still need to inhibit such biases. The present study employed a negative priming paradigm and compared the performance of overcoming heuristic bias among mathematics teachers (N = 32), pre-service mathematics teachers (N = 23), and non-mathematics undergraduate students (N = 43) in the case of overusing proportional heuristics. We found that all the participants were affected by the proportional heuristic bias, and they all demonstrated a cognitive process of inhibition when solving non-proportional problems. Moreover, we found that teachers with many years of teaching experience showed a stronger tendency to overuse proportionality than the other two groups. The present study highlights the importance of teachers' ability to understand their cognitive processes in teaching practice. The results imply that inhibitory control plays an essential role in both mathematical teaching and learning. Interventions that aim at improving teachers' metacognition and inhibition ability might be needed in future professional development programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xiaodong Li,1 Meng Yuan,1 Ping Xu,2 Wenyan Wu1 1School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China; 2College of Education, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Xiaodong LiSchool of Psychology, Shenzhen University, L3 Room 1220, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518060, People’s Republic of ChinaFax +86 755-26534605Email lxd_psy@163.comPing XuCollege of Education, Wenzhou University, Room 207, Building A9, Advanced Education Park Zone, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, 325000, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail px483811@gmail.comAim: Previous studies have found that both children and adults have difficulties in dealing with judgments in which self-perspective differs from other-perspective, even in level-1 perspective-taking. However, the underlying cognitive mechanism of this is still unclear. In the present study, we designed a negative priming (NP) paradigm of the dot-perspective task to examine whether inhibitory control was required to overcome egocentric bias in level-1 visual perspective-taking in children and adults. We observed an NP effect in both children (n= 43) and adults (n= 40). However, there was no significant difference between children and adults on the magnitude of the NP effect, indicating that when children could overcome the egocentric bias, they had inhibitory control ability comparable to that of adults in level-1 other-perspective-taking.Background: Visual perspective-taking is an indispensable ability in social interaction; hence, it has attracted great attention from researchers. However, the mechanism underlying this process remains unclear. The present study aimed to investigate the role of inhibitory control in level-1 visual perspective-taking from a developmental perspective in order to understand the performance differences in perspective-taking tasks between children and adults.Methods: The NP paradigm was applied to the dot-perspective task. Participants’ response times (RTs) and error rates (ERs) were recorded during the experiment. A 2 (trial type: test vs control, within-subject) × 2 (age: children vs adults) mix-design ANOVA was used to analyse the RTs and ERs data separately.Results: We observed an NP effect for both children (7.31, t (42) = 2.78, p < 0.01, Cohen’s d = 0.22) and adults (27.58, t (39) = 2.31, p < 0.05, Cohen’s d = 0.21). However, the difference in the magnitude of the NP effect between children and adults was not significant (t (81) = 0.54, p = 0.59).Conclusion: Inhibitory control was needed to overcome egocentric bias in level-1 visual perspective-taking for both children and adults. Moreover, when children could overcome egocentric bias, they had an inhibitory control ability comparable to that of adults.Keywords: level-1 visual perspective-taking, inhibitory control, negative priming, egocentric bias

Negative priming refers to the delayed response to a probe target that was previously a prime distractor. Memory retrieval has been proposed as one critical mechanism for the manifestation of negative priming. This perspective perpetuates that the contextual similarity between prime and probe trials should modulate memory retrieval, and therefore, affect negative priming. However, evidence for the contextual similarity effect in negative priming is mixed. The present study tested the hypothesis that attended contextual cues are more likely to be encoded into a distractor representation, and thus, are more likely to modulate the negative priming effect. By manipulating whether the contextual cues were relevant to the task demand in Section 1, and by manipulating whether cues had an abrupt or simultaneous onset, and by analysing reaction time (RT) distributions of the data in Section 2, our results demonstrated that attended cues produced the contextual similarity effect in negative priming, especially when RTs were long. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative visuospatial priming (NP) represents a quantifiable measure of inhibitory information processing that is disrupted in several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. We developed a novel rodent NP task to investigate mechanisms underlying NP and its role in various disorders, and to test potential therapeutics. In the present studies, we further characterized this novel paradigm by investigating whether NP is disrupted in rats reared in isolation, a developmental manipulation that produces a range of abnormalities in behavior, neurochemistry, and brain structure that mirror aspects of schizophrenia pathology. We also further explored the role of monoaminergic signaling in NP and the effects of isolation rearing by challenging both socially reared and isolation-reared rats with D-amphetamine during the NP task. Although fewer isolation-reared animals learned the complex NP task, those that learned exhibited unaffected NP compared with socially reared rats. Consistent with previous reports, D-amphetamine impaired NP and increased motor impulsivity in socially reared rats. In contrast, D-amphetamine did not affect NP or motor impulsivity in isolation-reared rats. These data confirm a monoaminergic influence on NP behavior and indicate that rats reared in isolation have altered dopaminergic sensitivity.

Primary producer-based and detrital-based energy pathways in streams are intertwined. Interactions between algae and heterotrophic microorganisms may accelerate or inhibit recalcitrant organic detritus decomposition depending on the environmental conditions. The magnitude and direction of this priming effect have been attributed to nutrient availability, but the influence of nutrients can be difficult to disentangle. To date, no studies have examined priming across a single-nutrient gradient where every other variable is tightly controlled. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of algal priming on decomposition of standardized cellulose substrates across an extensive phosphorus (P) gradient in laboratory mesocosms. We placed unbleached cotton strips into 11 recirculating mesocosms, each divided into a light section and a dark section. Each mesocosm was subjected to a different P concentration ranging from 1 to 1024 µg P/L, with all other nutrients maintained at saturating concentrations. P stimulated algal biomass in the light, but fungal biomass responded more to P in the dark. Decomposition, measured as loss of tensile strength (an indicator of cellulose catabolism), and extracellular cellulase enzyme activities were lower in the light treatment than the dark treatment above ∼16 μg P/L, indicating a suppression of decomposition by algae. This negative priming was likely due to preferential use of algal exudates by fungi in the light treatments under P-replete conditions, which may be caused by maximum algal accrual and possibly bulk labile organic matter exudation above these concentrations. A lack of positive priming in this study may have been due to negligible nutrient concentrations in the cotton and saturating nitrogen (N) concentrations in the water, suggesting that positive priming is primarily associated with N mining and, to a lesser extent, P mining. This study highlights how complex interactions between algae and microbial heterotrophs coupled with altered light and nutrient regimes may have consequences for stream food webs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xinchen Fu,1,* Xiaodong Li,2,* Ping Xu,2 Jie Zeng2 1Faculty of Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518060, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xiaodong Li Tel +86 135 3811 6007Email lxd_psy@163.comIntroduction: People often use heuristics derived from natural number tasks to solve fraction comparison tasks. For instance, one may falsely consider a fraction with a larger natural number to be the larger in magnitude, as in the case of 1/5 vs 1/4. We hypothesized that inhibitory control was needed to overcome this type of bias.Methods: To test the hypothesis, Event-related potentials (ERP) were collected when participants were conducting fraction comparison tasks that designed with the negative priming paradigm. Twenty-eight adult participants performed three types of fraction comparison tasks: congruent items, incongruent items and neutral items.Results: We found a negative priming effect in terms of response time. Consistently, ERP results demonstrated larger N1 and N2 amplitudes and a smaller P3 amplitude in the test trial than in the control trial.Conclusion: These findings indicated that adults still need to inhibit the “larger natural number-larger fraction” misleading strategy when solving fraction comparison tasks with common components.Keywords: heuristics strategy, inhibitory control, fraction comparison, negative priming, event-related potential

This study examined the role of inhibitory control in overcoming English written errors related to the past tense marking of irregular verbs. The participants were Chinese English as a second language (ESL) learners, including 55 eighth-grade students and 30 undergraduate students who were asked to perform a sentence determination task (i.e., to determine whether a sentence presented on a screen is grammatically correct). The study used a negative priming paradigm. We found that the negative priming (NP) effect occurred in both the adolescent participants and the adult participants, and the magnitude of the NP effect was smaller in the adults than in the adolescents. These findings support the inhibitory control perspective—that learning verb inflections relies not only on the acquisition of declarative grammatical knowledge but also on the ability to inhibit an overgeneralized rule or an overlearned strategy. This study sheds light on the importance of inhibitory control in ESL learning and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inhibition processing is an inherent part of cognitive and behavioral control. The aim of the present study was to develop and investigate psychometric criteria of an experimental paradigm that combines Stroop interference and negative priming, both of which involve inhibitory processes. We adopted a Stroop matching paradigm assessing interference control and implemented a negative priming condition. A nonclinical community sample of 94 volunteers performed this Stroop Negative Priming Matching paradigm. Since timing plays a role in priming, the interval between the prime and the probe has been varied in length (500 ms, 800 ms, and 3000 ms). The main results showed both, effects of Stroop interference and negative priming, as indicated by reaction times and incorrect responses. Reduced time pressure showed an effect on response speed and accuracy, but no interaction with interference and priming effects occurred. Reliability computed as internal consistency was generally high and did not differ between Stroop interference and negative priming scales. Retest-reliability was best for the prime–probe interval of 3000 ms. Concluding, the Stroop negative priming matching task provides reliable and directly comparable assessment of Stroop interference and negative priming effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge on interactions among microbial communities colonizing various streambed substrata (e.g. cobbles, sediment, leaf-litter etc.) is essential when investigating the functioning of stream ecosystems. However, these interactions are often forgotten when assessing the responses of aquatic microbial communities to chemical contamination. Using a stream microcosm approach, the respective impact of two sulfonamide antibiotics (sulfamethoxazole and sulfamethazine) on the ability of microbial heterotrophs to decompose alder leaves was investigated in the presence or absence of periphyton. Our hypothesis suggested that sulfonamides would negatively impair microbial litter decomposition and that periphyton could possibly alleviate this effect by stimulating microbial decomposer activity through a priming effect. Results showed that the presence of periphyton enriched water with oxygen and labile dissolved organic carbon forms. However, these labile organic carbon sources did not stimulate leaf-litter decomposition but mostly decoupled microbial decomposer activity from particulate organic matter to dissolved organic matter through negative priming. Also, the two sulfonamide molecules did not affect the leaf-litter decomposition process but significantly decreased bacterial biomass accrual on leaves. The reduction of bacteria was concomitant with an increase in biomass-specific β-glucosidase activity and this was attributed to a stress response from bacteria to sulfonamides. Further research looking at microbial interactions would provide for better assessment of chemical contamination effects in communities and processes in stream ecosystems.

Negative Priming (NP) refers to the phenomenon that responses towards previously ignored stimuli, as compared to new stimuli, are impaired. That is, NP is reflected in the performance on the probe display of a prime–probe sequence. NP is established in vision, audition and touch. In the current study, we presented participants with auditory, visual, and tactile manifestations of the same temporal patterns in order to measure NP across the senses. On each trial, the sensory modality shifted from the prime to the probe. Each prime and probe display consisted of a target and a distractor stimulus, presented to the same sensory modality. On some trials, the prime distractor repeated as probe target (ignored-repetition trials), on other trials the probe stimuli had not been involved in the prime display (control trials). We observed NP between audition and touch (Experiment 1) and between vision and audition (Experiment 2). These findings indicate that the processes underpinning NP can operate at an amodal, postperceptual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to examine the link between working memory capacity and the ability to exert cognitive control. Here, participants with either high or low working memory capacity (WMC) performed a semantic negative priming (NP) task as a measure of cognitive control. They were required to ignore a single prime word followed by a pattern mask appearing immediately or after a delay. The prime could be semantically related or unrelated to an upcoming target word where a forced-choice categorization was required. Each type of mask (immediate vs. delayed) appeared randomly from trial to trial. Results demonstrated that, when the ignored prime was immediately followed by the mask, neither of the groups (high or low WMC) showed reliable NP. In clear contrast, when the mask onset was delayed responses latencies were reliably slower for semantically related trials than for unrelated trials (semantic NP), but only for the high WMC group. The present results clearly demonstrate that semantic NP from single ignored primes depends on both the masking pattern that follows the prime (immediate vs. delayed mask), and on working memory capacity.

The aim of this study is to examine the link between working memory capacity and the ability to exert cognitive control. Here, participants with either high or low working memory capacity (WMC) performed a semantic negative priming (NP) task as a measure of cognitive control. They were required to ignore a single prime word followed by a pattern mask appearing immediately or after a delay. The prime could be semantically related or unrelated to an upcoming target word where a forced-choice categorization was required. Each type of mask (immediate vs. delayed) appeared randomly from trial to trial. Results demonstrated that, when the ignored prime was immediately followed by the mask, neither of the groups (high or low WMC) showed reliable NP. In clear contrast, when the mask onset was delayed responses latencies were reliably slower for semantically related trials than for unrelated trials (semantic NP), but only for the high WMC group. The present results clearly demonstrate that semantic NP from single ignored primes depends on both the masking pattern that follows the prime (immediate vs. delayed mask), and on working memory capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied negative priming (NP) in auditory attention switching. In a cued variant of dichotic listening, two spoken number words were presented, one to each ear, one spoken by a female, and one spoken by a male voice. A visual cue indicated whether the male or female voice was the target. A numerical magnitude judgement of the target number was required. The selection criterion could either switch or repeat across trials, so there were attention switch and repetition trials. Two experiments examined NP (distractor becomes target) and also included a "competitor priming" (CP) condition (target becomes distractor), relative to a "no priming" condition (target and distractor not related to previous trial). In Experiment 1, we investigated the basic priming effects. In Experiment 2, we additionally varied the response-cue interval (RCI; 100 ms vs. 1,900 ms) to examine time-related changes in priming. We found longer response times (RT) for switch trials compared with repetition trials (attention switch costs)—that is, when the internal processing context changed. In addition, we found longer RT for NP trials as well as reduced switch costs in long RCI, suggesting that previously relevant attentional settings dissipate over longer time. However, NP was not influenced by attention switches, and it was also not affected by RCI. Hence, NP in auditory attention switching does not seem strongly context or time sensitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative priming provides one useful measure of attentional focus and cognitive control, requirements of most domains of life (driving, work, play, etc.). Until now, 2 types of negative priming have been identified: identity negative priming and location negative priming. These effects are of particular interest because individuals who have difficulty ignoring distraction (e.g., individuals with schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder) exhibit reduced levels of negative priming. In the present experiments (N = 187), we report an entirely new type of negative priming based on when in time a target appears (temporal negative priming) rather than its identity or spatial location. Results indicate that responses to a target's temporal position were impaired when a distractor previously appeared at that same relative temporal position. In addition, temporal positioning was teased apart from response-based mechanisms and both were found to independently contribute to temporal negative priming. This result indicates that mechanisms of cognitive control trigger both response-based and memory-based processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• 7–8-year-olds and adults show number/size congruency effects during numerical comparison. • Inhibition in numerical estimation is evidenced by NP effects in both age groups. • NP effect decreases with age, reflecting the protracted development of inhibition. • Using negative priming paradigms has potential implications for education. Adapting a numerical comparison task to a negative priming paradigm, we aimed to provide new evidence that inhibitory control processes are involved in numerical comparison. We observed negative priming effects in both 7- to 8-year-olds (n = 47, M age = 7.92 years) and adults (n = 33, M age = 27.86 years), confirming that inhibition of irrelevant dimensions of magnitude is needed in numerical estimation at both ages. In addition, the amplitude of the negative priming effect was larger in children, in line with recent accounts suggesting that numerical development is rooted in part in the improvement of inhibitory control abilities. Our findings have educational implications for the investigation of the predictive values of numerical intuitions and executive functions for math achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Solving the incongruent perimeter-comparison task relies on an inhibition ability. • School-age children and adults performed a negative priming paradigm. • We found significant negative-priming effects in both children and adults. • This novel study compared inhibitory control between high/low achieving students. • High-achieving students were more efficient at inhibiting a misleading intuition. Many people apply the "larger area–larger perimeter" rule to solve the perimeter comparison problems, even in situations where this intuitive rule is misleading. To investigate whether inhibitory control is needed in the perimeter comparison reasoning and whether the efficiency of inhibitory control varies with students' ages and achievements, we designed a negative priming paradigm and conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, a negative priming effect was observed in both Chinese primary school students (n = 123) and college students (n = 42) when they were solving a perimeter comparison task. In Experiment 2 (N = 86), we found that the negative priming effect existed in both high-achieving and low-achieving primary school students, but the magnitude of this effect appeared to be smaller in high-achieving students. These results imply that success in solving geometry quantitative problems requires the ability to inhibit the larger area–larger perimeter intuition in some situations and also that high-achieving students are more capable of doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we showed evidence of an integration between two unconscious semantic representations. In experiment 1, two masked Chinese words of the same or different categories ("orange apple" or "grape hammer") were simultaneously presented in the prime, followed by two Chinese words also of same or different categories in the target. We examined possible prime/target visual feature priming, semantic category priming and motor response priming effects. Moreover, two ISI intervals (53, 163 ms) between the prime and the target words were used to examine the positive and negative priming. The results revealed a negative motor response priming and a positive semantic category priming effect independent of the ISI when the target words were of the same category. Experiment 2 eliminated an alternative interpretation of the effect based on different number of category words changed across the prime and the target. Experiment 3 eliminated a potential confound of unequal numbers of trials for motor congruent and incongruent conditions in Experiment 1. Overall, these results indicated an integration between the meanings of the two subliminally perceived words in the prime. The difference between simultaneous and sequential presentations, and the reason why positive priming was not observed when the interval between the prime and the target was short were discussed in the context of unconscious semantic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to ignore distracting objects is a core mechanism in selective attention and has been analyzed particularly with respect to its clinical implications (e.g., depression, schizophrenia, or unhealthy life-style). Here, we investigated the correlation between an established experimental task to measure distractor-processing and participants' blood pressure. We used the negative priming (NP) task in which participants show worse performance to target stimuli that were distractors in the previous trial. Notably, our participants were all healthy, young subjects but nevertheless we observed a correlation between blood pressure levels and NP effects, the higher the blood pressure the less NP was shown by participants. Our results suggest that processes modulated by higher blood pressure diminish the ability to successful ignore distracting objects not only at hypertension levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments investigated positive priming and negative priming effects in a lexical decision task. A priming task was used in which participants were required to make a verbal naming response to a prime target word, flanked by a distractor word, followed by a lexical decision response to a probe target word or nonword, flanked by a distractor word. The longevity of both positive and negative priming was explored in short-lag and long-lag conditions in which stimuli were presented once and only once, except in order to fulfill the priming manipulations. The results showed significant immediate positive priming and negative priming effects, but only negative priming was sustained for over 8 minutes with many intervening trials, whereas there was no evidence of positive priming after the same delay. These intriguing results have implications for the nature of inhibitory processing and differing predictions between inhibition-based and episodic retrieval accounts of priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bilingual primed lexical decision task was used to investigate priming effects produced by attended and ignored words. Participants were required to name prime target words in their weaker (L2) language and then make lexical decisions to probe target items in their dominant (L1) language. Accelerated lexical decisions to probe target words resulted when the word was a translation equivalent of the preceding prime target word, but they were not impaired when the word was a translation equivalent of the preceding ignored nontarget word. This novel finding of a positive priming effect coupled with the absence of a negative priming effect is the opposite pattern of earlier cross-language experiments wherein priming was assessed from L1 to L2 [i.e., Li, Neumann, & Chen, 2017. Identity and semantic negative priming in rapid serial visual presentation streams. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 79, 1755–1776; Neumann, McCloskey, & Felio, 1999. Cross-language positive priming disappears, negative priming does not: evidence for two sources of selective inhibition. Memory & Cognition, 27, 1051–1063; Nkrumah & Neumann, 2018. Cross-language negative priming remains intact, while positive priming disappears: evidence for two sources of selective inhibition. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 3, 1–12]. The present results may be a reflection of altered excitatory and inhibitory dynamics when a weaker, non-dominant language is the source for potential positive and negative priming effects between languages in bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The whole number bias is at the root of errors in decimal magnitude comparison tasks. • The whole number bias must be inhibited to compare the magnitude of decimal numbers. • The inhibition of the whole number bias is largely automatized by 12 years of age. Abstract A major source of errors in decimal magnitude comparison tasks is the inappropriate application of whole number rules. Specifically, when comparing the magnitude of decimal numbers and the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.9 vs. 0.476), using a property of whole numbers such as "the greater the number of digits, the greater its magnitude" may lead to erroneous answers. By using a negative priming paradigm, the current study aimed to determine whether the ability of seventh graders and adults to compare decimals where the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point was partly rooted in the ability to inhibit the "the greater the number of digits, the greater its magnitude" misconception. We found that after participants needed to compare decimal numbers in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.9 vs. 0.476), they were less efficient at comparing decimal numbers in which the largest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.826 vs. 0.3) than they were after comparing decimal numbers with the same number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.981 vs. 0.444). The negative priming effects reported in seventh graders and adults suggest that inhibitory control is needed at all ages to avoid errors when comparing decimals where the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual behaviour is the result of an interplay between distinct neural inhibitory and excitatory mechanisms. Individual differences in sexual excitation and sexual inhibition are proposed to play an important role in the processes sustaining the regulation of sexual behaviour. While much research has focused on the neural correlates of response inhibition, highlighting a prominent role of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), very little is known regarding the neural mechanisms underlying different aspects of sexual inhibition. Here, we experimentally combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to: (i) test the functional role of IFG during motivational and cognitive sexual inhibition; and (ii) reveal whether this IFG involvement in sexual inhibitory processes depends on sexual excitation and sexual inhibition as traits. Twenty-two participants performed an Approach-Avoidance (AA) and a Negative Affective Priming (NAP) paradigm to assess motivational and cognitive sexual inhibition respectively. Our fMRI study showed IFG being selectively activated during cognitive but not motivational sexual inhibition. Importantly, the level of this neural activity was modulated by individual sexual excitation scores. Interestingly, a transient disruption of IFG activity using TMS led to an improvement in cognitive, not motivational, sexual inhibition, but only when accounting for individual sexual excitation scores. These findings clearly document that sexual excitation modulates IFG activity levels during cognitive sexual inhibition, and at the same time determines the effects of TMS on IFG by improving cognitive control exclusively for individuals with high sexual excitation scores. These findings provide new insights regarding the functional role of IFG, and underscore the relevance of individual psychological differences in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying socioaffective processes.

Contextual similarity between learning and test phase has been shown to be beneficial for memory retrieval. Negative priming is known to be caused by multiple processes; one of which is episodic retrieval. Therefore, the contextual similarity of prime and probe presentations should influence the size of the negative priming effect. This has been shown for the visual modality. In Experiment 1, an auditory four-alternative forced choice reaction time task was used to test the influence of prime-probe contextual similarity on negative priming and the processes underlying the modulation by context. The negative priming effect was larger when the auditory context was repeated than when it was changed from prime to probe. The modulation by context was exclusively caused by an increase in prime response retrieval errors in ignored repetition trials with context repetition, whereas repeating only the context but not the prime distractor did not lead to an increase in prime response retrieval. This exact pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2. The findings suggest that contextual information is integrated with prime distractor and response information. Retrieval of the previous episode, including prime distractor, prime response, and context (event file), can be triggered when the former prime distractor is repeated, whereas a context cue alone does not retrieve the event file. This suggests an event file structure that is more complicated than its usually assumed binary structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments examining identity priming from attended and ignored novel words (words that are used only once except when repetition is required due to experimental manipulation) in a lexical decision task are reported. Experiment 1 tested English monolinguals whereas Experiment 2 tested Twi (a native language of Ghana, Africa)-English bilinguals. Participants were presented with sequential pairs of stimuli composed of a prime followed by a probe, with each containing two items. The participants were required to name the target word in the prime display, and to make a lexical decision to the target item in the probe display. On attended repetition (AR) trials the probe target item was identical to the target word on the preceding attentional display. On ignored repetition (IR) trials the probe target item was the same as the distractor word in the preceding attentional display. The experiments produced facilitated (positive) priming in the AR trials and delayed (negative) priming in the IR trials. Significantly, the positive and negative priming effects also replicated across both monolingual and bilingual groups of participants, despite the fact that the bilinguals were responding to the task in their non-dominant language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual behaviour is the result of an interplay between distinct neural inhibitory and excitatory mechanisms. Individual differences in sexual excitation and sexual inhibition are proposed to play an important role in the processes sustaining the regulation of sexual behaviour. While much research has focused on the neural correlates of response inhibition, highlighting a prominent role of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), very little is known regarding the neural mechanisms underlying different aspects of sexual inhibition. Here, we experimentally combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to: (i) test the functional role of IFG during motivational and cognitive sexual inhibition; and (ii) reveal whether this IFG involvement in sexual inhibitory processes depends on sexual excitation and sexual inhibition as traits. Twenty-two participants performed an Approach-Avoidance (AA) and a Negative Affective Priming (NAP) paradigm to assess motivational and cognitive sexual inhibition respectively. Our fMRI study showed IFG being selectively activated during cognitive but not motivational sexual inhibition. Importantly, the level of this neural activity was modulated by individual sexual excitation scores. Interestingly, a transient disruption of IFG activity using TMS led to an improvement in cognitive, not motivational, sexual inhibition, but only when accounting for individual sexual excitation scores. These findings clearly document that sexual excitation modulates IFG activity levels during cognitive sexual inhibition, and at the same time determines the effects of TMS on IFG by improving cognitive control exclusively for individuals with high sexual excitation scores. These findings provide new insights regarding the functional role of IFG, and underscore the relevance of individual psychological differences in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying socioaffective processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christie and Klein (2008) recommended using the 7 key conditions used by Neumann and DeSchepper (1991) and Stadler and Hogan (1996) to investigate the full range of effects produced by recently rejected distractors (negative priming) and recently attended targets (positive priming) in selective attention tasks. They suggested that incorporating all seven conditions should help to overcome the current muddle of possible explanations for positive and negative priming effects. Crucially, although the overall patterns of results reported by Neumann and DeSchepper and Stadler and Hogan were identical, some of the conditions in Stadler and Hogan's experiment produced much larger effects, particularly in the attended repetition (positive priming) conditions, compared with those of Neumann and DeSchepper. Here we use statistical support provided by an analytic approach known as predicted pattern testing (Levin & Neumann, 1999) to argue that asymmetric transfer produced by participant expectancy effects could account for the magnitude of Stadler and Hogan's positive priming outcomes, rather than the commonly accepted assumption made by Christie and Klein, and others, that prime-probe congruencies involving targets should affect performance (responses to probe targets) more than prime-probe congruencies involving distractors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christie and Klein (2008) recommended using the 7 key conditions used by Neumann and De- Schepper (1991) and Stadler and Hogan (1996) to investigate the full range of effects produced by recently rejected distractors (negative priming) and recently attended targets (positive priming) in selective attention tasks. They suggested that incorporating all seven conditions should help to overcome the current muddle of possible explanations for positive and negative priming effects. Crucially, although the overall patterns of results reported by Neumann and DeSchepper and Stadler and Hogan were identical, some of the conditions in Stadler and Hogan's experiment produced much larger effects, particularly in the attended repetition (positive priming) conditions, compared with those of Neumann and DeSchepper. Here we use statistical support provided by an analytic approach known as predicted pattern testing (Levin & Neumann, 1999) to argue that asymmetric transfer produced by participant expectancy effects could account for the magnitude of Stadler and Hogan's positive priming outcomes, rather than the commonly accepted assumption made by Christie and Klein, and others, that prime-probe congruencies involving targets should affect performance (responses to probe targets) more than prime-probe congruencies involving distractors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organo-mineral interactions control the stabilisation of soil organic matter (SOM) in mineral soils. Biochar can enhance these interactions via a range of mechanisms including Al-dominant cation bridging in acidic soils, ligand exchange, H-bonding, and π- π-bonding with polycyclic aromatics. But, field-based evidence of their magnitude is lacking. Here we assessed the role of organo-mineral interactions on the observed biochar-induced negative priming of native soil organic carbon (SOC) in a Ferralsol under annual ryegrass. Using repeated pulse labelling, the magnitude of production and fate of recently photosynthesised 13 C was traced amongst: soil plus root respiration, root biomass, soil aggregates and aggregate-associated C fractions. Biochar ( Eucalyptus saligna , 450 °C) amendment (30 Mg ha −1 ) increased total belowground 13 C recovery by 10% compared to the unamended control over the 12 month sampling period. We detected the greatest quantity of rhizodeposit in the mineral-protected SOM within macroaggregates (250–2000 μm). Through synchrotron-based spectroscopic analysis of bulk soils, we provide evidence of a mechanism for biochar-induced negative priming which is the accumulation of rhizodeposits in organo-mineral ( i.e. aggregate-protected and silt/clay-bound) fractions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative priming effect occurs when withholding a response to a stimulus impairs generation of subsequent responding to a same or a related stimulus. Our goal was to use the negative priming procedure to obtain insights about the memory representations generated by ignoring vs. attending/responding to a prime stimulus. Across three experiments we observed that ignoring a prime stimulus tends to generate higher identity-independent, non-specific repetition effects, owing to an overlap in the coarse perceptual form of a prime distractor and a probe target. By contrast, attended repetition effects generate predominantly identity-specific sources of facilitation. We use these findings to advocate for using laboratory phenomena to illustrate general principles that can be of practical use to non-specialists. In the case of the negative priming procedure, we propose that the procedure provides a useful means for investigating attention/memory interactions, even if the specific cause (or causes) of negative priming effects remain unresolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the roles of bottom-up mask-triggered inhibition and top-down inhibition in semantic categorization using the single negative priming (NP) paradigm. The masking (bottom-up) and ignore instructions (top-down, i.e., instructing participants to ignore the primes) were manipulated in Experiments 1–3 and Experiment 4, respectively. No priming was observed when only the masking was manipulated (Experiments 2 and 3), but NP was observed when a possible top-down ignore strategy (Experiment 1) or an ignore instruction (Experiment 4) was added. The results indicate that bottom-up mask-triggered inhibition cannot elicit semantic single NP by itself. However, top-down inhibition from an ignore instruction or ignore strategy is critical for triggering reliable semantic single NP. The findings suggest that semantic single NP originates from a push-pull mechanism by facilitating responses to unrelated trials and inhibiting responses to related trials. The experimental evidence also suggests that unconscious processes can be modulated by top-down control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-prime negative priming refers to a phenomenon whereby repeating a single prime as a probe target slows responses to that target. This phenomenon is modulated by cognitive control when the contingency between the prime and probe target is higher than chance. The present study investigated the role of prime awareness and awareness of the contingency within the control mechanism during single-prime negative priming. Results showed that while single-prime negative priming occurred regardless of participant awareness, the control mechanism was modulated by prime awareness and perceived contingency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The natural number bias (NNB) in arithmetic operations refers to the application of natural number properties to reasoning about rational numbers. Previous studies found the NNB interferes with students' problem-solving. However, few studies have examined it in the Chinese context or the underlying mechanism by which it can be overcome. Addressing these gaps, in Experiments 1a (n = 31) and 1b (n = 30), we found that Chinese students demonstrate the NNB despite linguistic differences between Chinese and western languages. Experiment 2 (n = 38) adopted a negative priming paradigm and found that inhibitory control was necessary to overcome the NNB. Experiment 3 (n = 34) employed the event-related potential technique; we observed increased P2 amplitude when students solved congruent problems, and increased N2 and decreased P3 amplitude when they solved incongruent problems. These results indicated that the NNB is rooted in intuitive thinking, and overcoming this bias relies on inhibition. • Investigates bias in arithmetic operations connected with natural vs. rational numbers. • Natural number bias identified in Chinese students despite linguistic differences. • Overcoming natural number bias requires inhibitory control. • Inhibition mechanism identified in behavioral and event-related potential experiments. • Pedagogical implications for inhibition training were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual attention is guided by the history of selections in previous trials, an effect usually referred to as intertrial priming. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether such priming in visual search is due to a strengthening of the target signal, or the suppression of the distractor signal. In two experiments, we examined the deviation of saccade endpoints in situations in which the target and distractors were presented in relative close proximity. We found both negative and positive priming, irrespective of whether the repeating feature was relevant or irrelevant. This finding is in contrast to previous results with this paradigm, based on which we concluded that visual priming is strictly the result of boosting perceptual target signals. Based on the differences between these experiments, we conclude that the number of distractors is essential in observing negative priming. We propose that negative priming is solely observed when multiple distractors result in either strong inhibition of distractor features, or strong adaptation to them. Whereas positive priming seems to be a robust mechanism, negative priming is only present if there are multiple distractors.