Abstract
This study addresses the issues of the subliminal priming effects of word and object on the object recognition and their underlying neural correlates. We investigate the priming effect by combining the masked repetition priming technique with the recording of event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs were recorded to repeated target (R) and unrelated target (UR) pictures of common objects that were immediately preceded by briefly presented pattern- masked prime word or prime object while participants conducted a semantic categorization task. Only the above threshold prime object elicited a P150 effect (at occipital sites) that was suggested to reflect early visual processing. Subliminal object prime elicited a marginally significant P300 while above threshold word prime elicited an N300 effect. Both above and subliminal word prime, and above threshold object prime elicited a widely distributed negativity (N400) that was argued to reflect more general semantic processing. It is suggested that subliminal words were processed to the semantic level but the subliminal objects can only be processed to object specific structural descriptive level. The results differentiate the subliminal priming effects between word and object to different levels of processing. Whether or not, the results were limited to the subliminal repetition priming paradigm will be discussed.
NSC 95-2413-H-039-002, 96-2413-H-039-001-MY2