Abstract
Reports on the effects of dividing attention at study on subsequent perceptual priming suggest that perceptual priming is generally unaffected by attentional manipulations as long as word identity is processed. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments by using the implicit word fragment completion and word stem completion tasks. Division of attention was instantiated with the Stroop task in order to ensure the processing of word identity even when the participant’s attention was directed to a stimulus attribute other than the word itself. Under these conditions, we found that even though perceptual priming was significant, it was significantlyreduced in magnitude. A stem cued recall test in Experiment 2 confirmed a more deleterious effect of divided attention on explicit memory. Taken together, our findings delineate the relative contributions of perceptual analysis and attentional processes in mediating perceptual priming on two ubiquitously used tasks of word fragment completion and word stem completion.
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Parts of the research reported in this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Dallas, 1998. Parts of the research reported in this article were supported by NIH Grant R29MH57345 to S.R.K.S. is now at Kronos, Inc., Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
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Rajaram, S., Srinivas, K. & Travers, S. The effects of attention on perceptual implicit memory. Memory & Cognition 29, 920–930 (2001). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195754
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195754