Carmen E. Westerberg, David R. Andresen, William E. Stevenson, & Chad J. Marsolek
University of Minnesota

Recognizing an object facilitates subsequent recognition of that object (priming), but also reduces recognition of other objects ("anti-priming"). We tested the possibility that anti-priming occurs in one, but not another, visual subsystem; in neural-network simulations, it occurred in a subnetwork that represented inputs in non-independent ways to recognize categories, but not in a subnetwork that represented inputs in independent ways to recognize exemplars. Participants were visually primed with objects or non-visually primed with auditory names of objects. Consistent with the models, when different objects were presented at test, anti-priming was observed in direct left-hemisphere, but not direct right-hemisphere test presentations.