title: Attentional control and asymmetric associative priming.
abstract: Participants completed a battery of 3 attentional control (AC) tasks (OSPAN, antisaccade, and Stroop, as in Hutchison, 2007) and performed a lexical decision task with symmetrically associated (e.g., sister-brother) and asymmetrically related primes and targets presented in both the forward (e.g., atom-bomb) and backward (e.g., fire-blaze) directions at either a 250- or 1,250-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). As predicted, high-AC individuals showed greater forward priming than low-AC individuals. There was also some evidence that low-AC individuals exhibited greater backward priming than high-AC individuals, and this difference was most pronounced in the later portions of the reaction time distribution. These results suggest that high-AC individuals are more likely to prospectively generate and maintain expected targets in working memory, whereas low-AC individuals are more likely to rely on a retrospective semantic matching or integration processes. These findings support the distinction between proactive and reactive forms of cognitive control embodied in Braver, Gray, and Burgess's (2007) dual-mechanism model of cognitive control.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Montana State University.
authors.forename: Keith A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Hutchison
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Montana State University.
authors.forename: Shelly J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Heap
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York.
authors.forename: James H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Neely
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York.
authors.forename: Matthew A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Thomas
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001244:Association; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult