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Missed prime words within the attentional blink evoke an N400 semantic priming effect
Author(s) -
Rolke Bettina,
Heil Martin,
Streb Judith,
Hennighausen Erwin
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/1469-8986.3820165
Subject(s) - n400 , rapid serial visual presentation , psychology , attentional blink , priming (agriculture) , prime (order theory) , cognitive psychology , event related potential , task (project management) , audiology , electroencephalography , response priming , lexical decision task , cognition , neuroscience , medicine , botany , germination , mathematics , management , combinatorics , economics , biology
When subjects identified a target among distractors in a rapid serial visual presentation task, the detection of a subsequent target is impaired (attentional blink). By measuring event‐related potentials (ERPs) we investigated if the processing of an unidentified prime word elicits the N400 semantic priming effect. Subjects ( N = 12) had to identify three target words among distractors in a rapid serial visual presentation task. We varied the association strength between a prime (second target) and a probe (third target). The detection of the prime was impaired. Missed primes did not elicit a P300, indicating that they were not explicitly recognized. Despite this difference between recognized and missed primes, the N400 effect was present in both cases. This result suggests that automatic spread of activation (ASA) can be evoked by missed primes within the attentional blink. It furthermore demonstrates that ASA is sufficient to evoke the N400 effect.