Incidental perceptual memory tests reveal priming when words are generated orally from a semantic cue at study, and this priming could reflect contamination by voluntary retrieval. We tested this hypothesis using a generate condition and two read conditions that differed in depth of processing . An intentional word-stem completion test showed an advantage for the read-semantic over the generate condition and an advantage for the generate over the read-phonemic condition, and completion times were longer than in a control test, prior (...) to which there was no study phase. An incidental word-stem completion test showed equivalent priming for the read-semantic and read-phonemic study conditions, despite considerable power, and completion times were no longer than control, indicating that retrieval was involuntary, and insensitive to prior conceptual processing. The generate condition produced less priming than the read conditions, but significant priming nonetheless. The results show that priming from generating can be involuntary and suggest that lexical processes are responsible. They are also the first results conjointly showing a crossed double dissociation, a single dissociation, and a parallel effect across memory tests with identical physical retrieval cues. (shrink)

Incidental perceptual memory tests reveal priming when words are generated orally from a semantic cue at study, and this priming could reflect contamination by voluntary retrieval. We tested this hypothesis using a generate condition and two read conditions that differed in depth of processing (read-phonemic vs read-semantic). An intentional word-stem completion test showed an advantage for the read-semantic over the generate condition and an advantage for the generate over the read-phonemic condition, and completion times were longer than in a control (...) test, prior to which there was no study phase. An incidental word-stem completion test showed equivalent priming for the read-semantic and read-phonemic study conditions, despite considerable power, and completion times were no longer than control, indicating that retrieval was involuntary, and insensitive to prior conceptual processing. The generate condition produced less priming than the read conditions, but significant priming nonetheless. The results show that priming from generating can be involuntary and suggest that lexical processes are responsible. They are also the first results conjointly showing a crossed double dissociation, a single dissociation, and a parallel effect across memory tests with identical physical retrieval cues. (shrink)

Connectionist views in psychology and neuroscience give the impression that there is no one place in the brain into which all information funnels. If these impression are accurate, then we will have great difficulty picking out a point in neuronal or psychological time at which phenomena become conscious. If so, pointing to one place in which we are conscious of a particular event and expecting a psychophysical correlation between qualitative and neural events seems hopeless. In response to this worry, I (...) argue that ERP research can bridge the psychology and neuroscience such that we can identify when qualitative experiences occur relative to other cognitive events. I present data suggesting that accessing an early implicit priming system gives rise to a qualitatively different kind of ERP wave than does accessing a later episodic memory system. These results illustrate how it is possible to parse psychological events finely enough in (neuro-)psychological investigations in order to determine when particular psychological events occur in the head. So, if we could align consciousness with some psychological event, then we should be able to articulate when that event occurs in the processing stream (relative to other events) as long as that event can be correlated with some ERP waveform. (shrink)