Psychology Commons^™

Eyes Wide Open: Pupil Size As A Proxy For Inhibition In The Masked-Priming Paradigm, Jason Geller, Mary L. Still, Alison L. Morris

Psychology Faculty Publications

A core assumption underlying competitive-network models of word recognition is that in order for a word to be recognized, the representations of competing orthographically similar words must be inhibited. This inhibitory mechanism is revealed in the masked-priming lexical-decision task (LDT) when responses to orthographically similar word prime-target pairs are slower than orthographically different word prime-target pairs (i.e., inhibitory priming). In English, however, behavioral evidence for inhibitory priming has been mixed. In the present study, we utilized a physiological correlate of cognitive effort never before used in the masked-priming LDT, pupil size, to replicate and extend behavioral demonstrations of inhibitory …