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Abstract:
Line drawings of structurally possible and impossible
3-dimensional shapes were used to investigate implicit memory
representations formed in a negative priming task wherein objects
are ignored, but later become the focus of attention. In Experiment
1, ignored possible and impossible renditions of 3-D shapes
produced equivalent response delay latencies when participants
responded to them on the next trial. This suggests that when an
unattended shape is irrelevant to the task and competes for a
response with an attended relevant shape, a detailed trace of the
unattended shape is nonetheless formed. In Experiment 2 we
attempted to determine if both short and long-lasting memory traces
of ignored novel 3-D shapes are formed in a single brief exposure,
and whether there is any difference in the memory traces of
structurally impossible, compared to possible, shapes. On the basis
of obtaining facilitatory repetition priming effects for possible,
but not for impossible shapes, Schacter, Cooper, & Delaney
(1990) concluded that the human brain has difficulty constructing
and maintaining mental representations of objects that would be
physically impossible to construct in the 3-D world. By contrast,
we found that negative priming provides a more sensitive behavioral
index than repetition priming for detecting long-lived priming
effects, because equivalent negative priming was obtained for
possible and impossible shapes despite the fact that participants
had a briefer glimpse of the shapes in the present task than the
participants in the Schacter et al. experiments. Implications for
top-down inhibitory feedback processes in selective attention are
discussed.
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