title: Integrating the automatic and the controlled: strategies in semantic priming in an attractor network with latching dynamics.
abstract: Semantic priming has long been recognized to reflect, along with automatic semantic mechanisms, the contribution of controlled strategies. However, previous theories of controlled priming were mostly qualitative, lacking common grounds with modern mathematical models of automatic priming based on neural networks. Recently, we introduced a novel attractor network model of automatic semantic priming with latching dynamics. Here, we extend this work to show how the same model can also account for important findings regarding controlled processes. Assuming the rate of semantic transitions in the network can be adapted using simple reinforcement learning, we show how basic findings attributed to controlled processes in priming can be achieved, including their dependency on stimulus onset asynchrony and relatedness proportion and their unique effect on associative, category-exemplar, mediated and backward prime-target relations. We discuss how our mechanism relates to the classic expectancy theory and how it can be further extended in future developments of the model.
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
authors.forename: Itamar
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lerner
authors.forename: Shlomo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bentin
authors.forename: Oren
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Shriki
mesh_terms: D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics
keywords: Controlled processes; Distributed representations; Expectancy; Latching dynamics; Neural networks; Semantic matching; Semantic priming; Word recognition