Unnoticed but not Forgotten: EEG-Correlates of the Priming Effects of Dual Figures

• Published in: Neuroscience and behavioral physiology 2023-10, Vol.53 (8), p.1435-1440
• Main Authors: Filippova, M. G., Chernov, R. V., Gorbunov, I. A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Decision making; EEG; Experiments; Memory; Mental task performance; Neurobiology; Neurosciences; Physiology; Psychology of learning; Russian language; Semantics
• ISSN: 0097-0549; 1573-899X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11055-023-01536-z

The study reported here addressed the behavioral and EEG correlates of the effects of dual images used as primers for a lexical decision task to seek evidence for inhibition theory or episode retrieval theory as explanations of the negative priming effect. At the behavioral level, conscious meanings of dual images were found to produce positive priming effects, while unconscious meanings produced negative priming effects. EEG correlates of these effects were identified in the anterior-central regions of the brain. Thus, a decrease in the amplitude of the N400 component served as a correlate of positive priming, while a decrease in the amplitude of the late positive complex was a correlate of negative priming. Both components are considered in the literature as indicators of episode retrieval, a process associated with memory. The fact that the priming effect of unconscious meanings of dual images at the psychophysiological level is expressed in terms of memory phenomena leads to the conclusion that subjects remember meanings that they did not notice.