AI Article Synopsis

  • Visual object recognition can improve with relevant stimuli, but written words show a unique scenario where similar starting syllables can hinder recognition.
  • A study using fMRI found that this negative effect is linked to increased activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), rather than decreased activity in the areas usually associated with positive priming.
  • Additionally, the research indicates that the left IFG acts as a quick word processing area, which can produce varying effects based on the characteristics of the stimuli, even if the participants' focus remains unchanged.

Article Abstract

Visual object recognition is generally known to be facilitated when targets are preceded by the same or relevant stimuli. For written words, however, the beneficial effect of priming can be reversed when primes and targets share initial syllables (e.g., "boca" and "bono"). Using fMRI, the present study explored neuroanatomical correlates of this negative syllabic priming. In each trial, participants made semantic judgment about a centrally presented target, which was preceded by a masked prime flashed either to the left or right visual field. We observed that the inhibitory priming during reading was associated with a left-lateralized effect of repetition enhancement in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), rather than repetition suppression in the ventral visual region previously associated with facilitatory behavioral priming. We further performed a second fMRI experiment using a classical whole-word repetition priming paradigm with the same hemifield procedure and task instruction, and obtained well-known effects of repetition suppression in the left occipito-temporal cortex. These results therefore suggest that the left IFG constitutes a fast word processing system distinct from the posterior visual word-form system and that the directions of repetition effects can change with intrinsic properties of stimuli even when participants' cognitive and attentional states are kept constant.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.10.063DOI Listing

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