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Faculty Advisors

Robert Hurley and Conor McLennan

Description

Listeners typically recognize words they have heard recently more efficiently than words they have not heard recently; this is known as a repetition priming effect. When looking at Event Related Potentials (ERPs), which are the averaged encephalographic brain responses to a class of stimuli, it has been demonstrated that the repetition priming effect is observed in both early and late ERP time windows (Massol, Grainger, Midgley, & Holcomb, 2012). ERPs in early time windows (~150-300ms) are thought to reflect auditory sensory processing (Woodman, 2010) (Massol et al., 2012) (Coch & Mitra, 2010), while ERPs in late time windows (~400-700ms) are more sensitive to access of stored lexical representations (Kutas & Dale, 1997). We hypothesize that the repetition of pseudowords will primarily be reflected in early time windows (indicating only auditory sensory processing), while repetition of real words will occur in both early and late time windows. While we have yet to complete the study and obtain ERP data, preliminary data from 10 participants who participated in the visual norming piloting of stimuli has shown that averaged reaction times (RT) for pseudowords (RT=672.63ms) were significantly greater that reaction times for their corresponding low frequency words (RT= 612.96ms). The low frequency range for words was increased from 0-2 to 2-3 (Log SUBTLEX Frequency) in order to create a stronger set of stimuli.

Publication Date

2019

College

College of Sciences and Health Professions

Department

Psychology

Disciplines

Psychology

Student Publication

This item is part of the McNair Scholars Program.

Electrophysiology of Repetition Priming for Pseudowords and Words

Included in

Psychology Commons

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