Comparing Repetition Priming Effects in Words and Arithmetic Equations: Robust Priming Regardless of Color or Response Hand Change

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that stimulus repetition can lead to reliable behavioral improvements. Although this repetition priming (RP) effect has been reported in a number of paradigms using a variety of stimuli including words, objects, and faces, only a few studies have investigated mathematical cognition involving arithmetic computation, and no prior research has directly compared RP effects in a linguistic task with an arithmetic task. In two experiments, we used a within-subjects design to investigate and compare the magnitude of RP, and the effects of changing the color or the response hand for repeated, otherwise identical, stimuli in a word and an arithmetic categorization task. The results show that the magnitude of RP was comparable between the two tasks and that changing the color or the response hand had a negligible effect on priming in either task. These results extended previous findings in mathematical cognition. They also indicate that priming does not vary with stimulus domain. The implications of the results were discussed with reference to both facilitation of component processes and episodic memory retrieval of stimulus-response binding.

Keywords: arithmetic; facilitation of component processes; repetition priming; stimulus–response binding; words.

FIGURE 1

A schematic representation for the ID and color sessions in the word classification task in Experiment 1. The allocation of words to condition and the order in which the words were presented within each of the study and test blocks was randomized. Note that the identity of the stimuli in the color session was always the same between the study and test blocks regardless of whether there was a change in color between the two blocks.

FIGURE 2

RT differences between the study and test blocks in the word classification task as a function of feature and condition in Experiment 1. Error bars show ±1 standard deviation of the mean. A positive number indicates faster RT in the test block than in the study block. A negative number indicates slower RT in the test block than in the study block.

FIGURE 3

RT differences between the study and test blocks in the math task as a function of feature and condition in Experiment 1. Error bars show ±1 standard deviation of the mean.

FIGURE 4

RT differences between the study and test blocks as a function of condition in Experiment 2. Error bars show ±1 standard deviation of the mean.