Guida Courtney, Kim Minwoo J B, Stibolt Olivia A, Lompado Alyssa, Hoffman James E
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Republic of Korea.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 May;87(4):1199-1218. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-02997-1. Epub 2024 Dec 24.
In the attentional blink paradigm, participants attempt to identify two targets appearing in a rapidly presented stream of distractors. Report accuracy is typically high for the first target (T1) while identification of the second target (T2) is impaired when it follows within about 200-400 ms of T1. An important question is whether T2 is processed to a semantic level even when participants are unaware of its identity. We examined this issue in three studies that used natural scenes as stimuli and the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) as a measure of semantic priming. In the first experiment, the prime (e.g., a doghouse in a yard) was presented at the beginning of the trial and a test picture that was related (e.g., a dog standing in the kitchen) or unrelated (e.g., a coffee mug on a table) appeared as T2. In the second experiment, the prime was presented as T2 and the test picture appeared at the end of the picture sequence. In both experiments, we found robust semantic priming when participants were aware of the identity of the blinked picture and an absence of priming when they were unaware. In Experiment 3, we used identity priming to assess whether earlier representations preceding semantics were preserved, and again found that priming critically depended on awareness of the prime's identity. These results suggest that semantic priming in scenes, as measured with the N400, is a higher-level process that critically depends on attention and awareness.
在注意瞬脱范式中，参与者试图识别出出现在快速呈现的干扰物序列中的两个目标。对于第一个目标（T1），报告准确率通常较高，而当第二个目标（T2）在T1之后约200 - 400毫秒内出现时，其识别会受到损害。一个重要的问题是，即使参与者不知道T2的身份，它是否会被加工到语义层面。我们在三项研究中探讨了这个问题，这些研究使用自然场景作为刺激，并将事件相关电位（ERP）的N400成分作为语义启动的指标。在第一个实验中，启动刺激（例如，院子里的一个狗窝）在试验开始时呈现，一个相关的（例如，一只狗站在厨房里）或不相关的（例如，桌子上的一个咖啡杯）测试图片作为T2出现。在第二个实验中，启动刺激作为T2呈现，测试图片出现在图片序列的末尾。在这两个实验中，我们发现当参与者知道瞬脱图片的身份时，会有强烈的语义启动，而当他们不知道时，则没有启动。在实验3中，我们使用身份启动来评估语义之前的早期表征是否被保留，并且再次发现启动关键取决于对启动刺激身份的意识。这些结果表明，用N400测量的场景中的语义启动是一个更高层次的过程，它关键取决于注意力和意识。
