Once in a blue Mooney! Using the effects of prior exposure to elicit qualitative differences in naming of...

We investigated the extent to which repetition priming can elicit qualitative differences in identification of a stimulus with multiple identities. In an exposure phase, participants viewed images of objects from one of two stimulus sets (A or B). In a naming phase, participants viewed superMooney stimuli (for 6 s each), comprising perceptually degraded (Mooney) versions of the A and B images superimposed in distinct colours, and attempted to name both. Across four experiments with university students (Ns = 51, 60, 61, 59), rates of correct naming of previously exposed components exceeded those of components that were not. This was replicated when the stimulus exposure duration was self-paced, and with different stimulus sets. Our findings robustly demonstrate an I See it Differently effect- two people can experience the same stimulus in qualitatively different ways, depending on prior experience. Future research should address the possibility of contamination of the effect by explicit recall.