Premium
Masked repetition priming and event‐related brain potentials: A new approach for tracking the time‐course of object perception
Author(s) -
Eddy Marianna,
Schmid Annette,
Holcomb Phillip J.
Publication year - 2006
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/j.1469-8986.2006.00455.x
Subject(s) - psychology , n400 , categorization , repetition priming , cognitive psychology , event related potential , negativity effect , semantic memory , perception , priming (agriculture) , repetition (rhetorical device) , cognition , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , lexical decision task , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , botany , germination , biology
This study reports a new approach to studying the time‐course of the perceptual processing of objects by combining for the first time the masked repetition priming technique with the recording of event‐related potentials (ERPs). In a semantic categorization task ERPs were recorded to repeated and unrelated target pictures of common objects that were immediately preceded by briefly presented pattern masked prime objects. Three sequential ERP effects were found between 100 and 650 ms post‐target onset. These effects included an early posterior positivity/anterior negativity (N/P190) that was suggested to reflect early feature processing in visual cortex. This early effect was followed by an anterior negativity (N300) that was suggested to reflect processing of object‐specific representations and finally by a widely distributed negativity (N400) that was argued to reflect more domain general semantic processing.