The Initiation Stimulus Stimulates The Role Of Intensity In The Negative Compatibility Effect

The negative compatibility effect (NCE) is a surprising phenomenon that viewers' responses to the target are slower when the target is preceded by a compatible prime (i.e., cueing the same response as the target) less accurate when a target is preceded by an incompatible prime (i.e., cueing a response opposite to that indicated by the target). The majority of research has suggested that inhibition mechanism plays a particularly important role in the process of triggered the NCE. However, at present, it has not yet been determined that the inhibition mechanism, in essence, belongs to self-inhibition or mask-triggered inhibition. Boy et al. (2008) manipulated the novelty of masks by controlling the type of forward object (which was presented near the prime location immediately prior to the appearance of the prime). The results showed that an NCE was observed when a novel mask was presented, whereas a PCE was observed when a familiar mask was presented. It was indicated that the mask played a key role in the process of triggering inhibition. However, this interpretation may not be the most appropriate interpretation, because the change of the forward object also altered the representation strength of the prime. The current study presented another possible explanation:the forward objects may lead to visual crowding effect (a deleterious effect to recognize objects in clutter) that weakened the perceptual representation of the prime, resulting in decreasing the following inhibitory strength, and thus NCE reversed the PCE. It is indicted that the self-inhibition of prime activation might play a key role in triggering the NCE.In the current study, three experiments examined whether visual crowding decreased the representation strength of the prime, thereby confirming that the self-inhibition or mask-triggered inhibition plays a key role in triggering the NCE. Experiments 1 and 2 used a similar procedure and manipulated the same variables (i.e., compatibility and forward object type) as those investigated by Boy et al. (2008) but with the typical NCE paradigm, to ascertain whether a pattern of results similar to that reported by Boy et al. (2008) occurs when the typical NCE paradigm is used. To a certain extent, these experiments verified the universality of the phenomenon found by Boy et al. (2008). The results showed that a similar result pattern as that reported by Boy et al. (2008) was obtained. Experiment 3 manipulated the prime presentation duration (24,35 and 47ms) to confirm the role of representation strength of prime in triggering the NCE. The results showed that increasing the prime duration reduced NCEs in the rectangle condition, as prime representations become too strong or long-lasting to be inhibited, but increased NCEs in the line condition as primes become strong enough to reliably trigger inhibition. It indicted that visual crowding can weaken perceptual representation of prime and reduce or reverse the NCE.Summing up the results and discussions of the three experiments, present research conduct all the following conclusion:1. The impact of visual crowding on the NCE widely occurred in the processing of different stimuli. To a certain extent, these experiments verified the universality of the phenomenon found by Boy et al. (2008).2. The representation strength of the prime plays a key role in triggering the NCE. Specifically, when the strength of visual crowding increases, the representation strength of the prime will decrease and the strength of the prime activation will decrease, and thus resulting inhibition decline in strength.