Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Memory. 2012;20(4):400-13. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2012.669482. Epub 2012 Mar 22.
Participants often respond more quickly and more accurately to a repeated stimulus compared to a non-repeated one, a phenomenon known as repetition priming. In semantic classification tasks priming appears to be largely attributable to the learning of stimulus-decision and stimulus-response associations, which allow participants to bypass many of the processes engaged during initial stimulus analysis. The current study tested whether stimulus-response learning plays a similarly dominant role in priming that occurs in perceptual classification tasks. Unfamiliar objects were used as stimuli to reduce the influence of semantic processes on priming and the task switched for all test trials to eliminate stimulus-decision learning. The results showed across-task priming as measured by reaction time facilitation and improved accuracy when the response remained the same during the encoding and test phases. When the response switched, similar levels of reaction time facilitation were observed, but priming as measured by accuracy was significantly reduced and no longer significant. These findings indicate that stimulus-response learning contributes to priming in perceptual classification tasks, but does not play a dominant role. Significant stimulus-level learning that is independent of the task and response also occurs and likely indexes facilitated perceptual processing of the objects.
参与者通常对重复刺激的反应比非重复刺激更快、更准确，这种现象被称为重复启动。在语义分类任务中，启动似乎主要归因于刺激-决策和刺激-反应关联的学习，这使得参与者能够绕过初始刺激分析过程中的许多步骤。本研究测试了在感知分类任务中，刺激-反应学习是否在启动中扮演类似的主导角色。使用不熟悉的物体作为刺激，以减少语义过程对启动的影响，并在所有测试试验中切换任务，以消除刺激-决策学习。结果表明，在编码和测试阶段反应保持不变时，通过反应时促进和准确性提高来衡量跨任务启动。当反应切换时，观察到类似水平的反应时促进，但准确性测量的启动显著降低，不再显著。这些发现表明，刺激-反应学习有助于感知分类任务中的启动，但不是主导作用。还发生了与任务和反应无关的显著刺激水平学习，可能反映了对象的感知处理得到促进。
