IMPLICIT MEMORY IN THE TACTILE MODALITY - EVIDENCE FROM BRAILLE STEM COMPLETION IN THE BLIND

Research on perceptual priming has previously focused exclusively on p riming in the visual and auditory modalities. The present study explor ed whether perceptual priming also extends to the tactile modality. Ta ctile priming for Braille words was examined in a group of blind parti cipants, using a Braille analogue of the stem-completion task. The res ults for tactile priming paralleled previous stem-completion results i n other modalities. Manipulating the encoding task at study (semantic vs. nonsemantic) dissociated implicit and explicit Braille stem-comple tion performance, and priming was unaffected by the number of study pr esentations (one vs. three). Finally, Braille stem-completion priming was found in a cross-modal paradigm to have both a specifically tactil e component and a cross-modal component. These results demonstrate for the first time that verbal priming can occur in the tactile domain an d that tactile priming has basic functional similarities with stem-com pletion priming in the visual and auditory domains.