UNNOTICED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: EEG-CORRELATES OF AMBIGUOUS FIGURES PRIMING EFFECTS

Abstract

In order to find evidence of the inhibition or episodic retrieval account to explain the effect of negative priming, a study of behavioral and EEG-correlates of ambiguous figures perception, which are used as primes for the lexical decision task. It is shown that at the behavioral level the noticed meanings of used images demonstrate a positive, unnoticed – a negative priming-effect. EEG correlates of these effects in the anterio-central regions of the brain were revealed. Thus, the correlate of positive priming is attenuation of the N400 component, and the correlate of negative priming is attenuation of the late positive complex. Both components are considered in the literature as indicators of episodic retrieval, a memory-related process. The fact that the priming effect of the unnoticed meanings of ambiguous figures at the psychophysiological level is expressed in memory phenomena leads to the conclusion that the subjects remember the meanings they did not notice.