Abstract
Response priming is a phenomenon that responses are faster when target and prime elicit the same response (congruent condition), compared with when they elicit the opposite responses (incongruent condition). The effect occurs even when the prime is invisible. However, the effect of visibility of the prime has not been verified. In addition, it was not clear whether the effect depends on the facilitation of response by the congruent prime or the inhibition by the incongruent prime. We found that the visibility of the prime measured by Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) affected both facilitation and inhibition (Morimoto & Makioka, VSS2020). The prime and the target were both arrows, and the participants responded to the direction of the target arrow with a joystick. In this study, we investigated whether the effect of visibility depends on the type of the stimuli and response; we used squares and diamonds for targets and primes. The participants responded whether the target was the square or the diamond by a mouse click. Thirty-three undergraduate student participated. Participants were told that two stimulus were presented in succession and the first stimuli (prime) might be invisible but the second stimuli (target) was always visible. They were instructed to response of the target as quickly and accurately as possible, and then to report PAS of the prime. Analysis by liner mixed model confirmed that the PAS of the prime affects the strength of the response priming independently of the SOA. The inhibitory effect by PAS of the incongruent prime and the facilitatory effect by PAS of the congruent prime were both observed. These results were consistent with the results of the experiment using arrow stimuli and the joystick response, confirming that the effects of facilitation and inhibition are independent of the type of the stimuli and response.