REPETITION PRIMING OF HOMOGRAPHS AND NOVEL OBJECTS - EVIDENCE FOR AN ITEM-SPECIFIC LOCUS

Two experiments examined the nature of the memory representations unde rlying repetition priming. In Expt 1, homographs (words with two meani ngs) were presented accompanied by bias words that demanded one partic ular interpretation of each. These homographs were then used in a test phase picture-word matching task. Repeated items accompanied by a pic ture chat demanded another interpretation of the word showed as much f acilitation as repeated items accompanied by a picture that preserved the trained interpretation of the homograph. Under the same encoding c onditions, participants were able to remember which bias words accompa nied the homographs at training, yet there was no evidence of a role f or the retrieval of interpretive encoding operations in producing the repetition priming observed; results were instead consistent with acti vation of item-specific representations underlying the effect. This lo cus of repetition priming was further investigated in Expt 2. Particip ants made same-different responses to pairs of simultaneously presente d novel objects. There was no reduction in facilitation of responding following recombination of pairings of items between training and test , as compared to pairs repeated intact. These results are not compatib le with accounts of the priming effect based only on the retrieval of prior processing episodes, or the reinstatement of prior processing de mands. The results are consistent with a perceptual locus of the primi ng effect, based not on pre-existing representations or connections, b ut on representations of structure and form of individual stimuli.