Priming
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Priming is a nonconscious form of human memory, which is concerned with perceptual identification of words and objects it has only recently been recognized as separate from other forms of memory or memory systems. Priming refers to activating particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task.
In a neurological view priming can be seen as the activation of clusters of neurons (which can be seen as little stores of particular information). An interconnected cluster is surrounded by other clusters that are more or less connected with each other. When a cluster is activated, for example by the input of sensory neurons, surrounding clusters that are more interconnected (due to similar information, for example: if both clusters represent a kind of flower) become more activated and are therefore more likely to come into consciousness. So when the cluster that represent the concept of "flower" is activated, particular clusters will be more activated then others (i.e. kinds of flowers). These associations are often regarded as unconscious, but can be conscious as well. For example, after studying a list of 20 words containing the word "garbage", a subject can be asked to recall the word by priming with a reminder stimulus "gar".
Evidence is converging for the proposition that priming is an expression of a perceptual representation system that operates at a pre-semantic level; it emerges early in development, and access to it lacks the kind of flexibility characteristic of other cognitive memory systems.
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| This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Priming. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
