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The Attentional Set Shifting Task: A Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice
Published on: February 4, 2015
On the adaptive flexibility of evaluative priming.
Klaus Fiedler1, Matthias Bluemke, Christian Unkelbach
1Psychologisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Hauptstrasse 47-51, 69117, Heidelberg, Germany. kf@psychologie.uni-heidelberg.de
Memory & Cognition
|January 26, 2011
Summary
Evaluative priming effects are robust yet flexible. Strategic control can eliminate or reverse these effects by engaging participants in responding to both primes and targets, demonstrating adaptive cognitive processes.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Priming effects are crucial for adaptive cognitive functions, requiring both robustness and flexibility.
- Previous research established evaluative-priming effects, but their strategic modulation remained less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the conditions under which evaluative-priming effects can be strategically controlled or eliminated.
- To explore the role of flexible strategic processes in working memory versus fixed memory structures.
Main Methods:
- Conducted four experiments manipulating stimulus-onset asynchrony and participant response requirements (responding to primes and targets vs. targets only).
- Utilized valence and gender classification tasks with pronunciation and keystroke response modes.
- Analyzed the impact of statistical contingencies between prime and target valence on priming effects.
Main Results:
- Regular evaluative-priming effects were observed at longer stimulus-onset asynchronies.
- The standard congruity effect disappeared when participants responded to both primes and targets.
- Strategic control allowed for the elimination or reversal of priming effects, with outcomes dependent on learned contingencies.
Conclusions:
- Evaluative-priming effects are not fixed but are strategically modulated, supporting an adaptive-cognitive perspective.
- Flexible strategic processes in working memory play a key role in modulating priming, rather than solely fixed memory structures.
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