page_title: Response priming
section_title: Response priming as a visuomotor effect
hierarchical_section_title: Response priming / Response priming as a visuomotor effect
caption_attribution_description: English: Respone priming effect
context_page_description: In the psychology of perception and motor control, the term response priming denotes a special form of priming. Generally, priming effects take place whenever a response to a target stimulus is influenced by a prime stimulus presented at an earlier time. The distinctive feature of response priming is that prime and target are presented in quick succession and are coupled to identical or alternative motor responses. When a speeded motor response is performed to classify the target stimulus, a prime immediately preceding the target can thus induce response conflicts when assigned to a different response as the target. These response conflicts have observable effects on motor behavior, leading to priming effects, e.g., in response times and error rates. A special property of response priming is its independence from visual awareness of the prime.
context_section_description: In 1962, Fehrer and Raab reported experiments where participants were required to press a single key as quickly as possible upon presentation of a visual target stimulus. The visibility of the target was strongly reduced by so-called metacontrast masking (see below). The authors found that the response times were independent of the subjective visibility of the target, i.e., responses to well-visible targets were just as fast as those to nearly invisible targets (Fehrer-Raab effect). The term response priming was first employed by Rosenbaum and Kornblum with respect to an experimental paradigm where different aspects of motor responses were primed by visual stimuli. The modern procedure of response priming was developed in the 1980s and 1990s by Peter Wolff, Werner Klotz, Ulrich Ansorge, and Odmar Neumann at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. The paradigm was developed further in the 1990s by a research team led by Dirk Vorberg at the University of Braunschweig, Germany.
   Typical time course of a trial in a response priming paradigm. Here, the participant responds as quickly as possible to the shape of the target stimulus (diamond or square) by pressing the assigned response key. Shortly before, a prime is presented (also a diamond or square) that influences the response to the target. The time interval between prime onset and target onset is called the "stimulus-onset asynchrony" (SOA). In many response priming experiments, the target also serves to visually mask the prime. Therefore, a second task is often employed where participants are asked to identify the masked prime. b) Prime and target are consistent when assigned to the same response, and inconsistent when assigned to different responses. c) The visibility of the prime can be strongly influenced by masking effects from the target. 
  In all response priming paradigms, participants have to respond to a specific target stimulus. In a simple experiment, this could be one of two geometric stimuli, each of which is assigned to one of two response keys (e.g., diamond - left key; square - right key). The experiment consists of a large number of trials where the participant presses the left key upon appearance of a diamond, and the right key upon appearance of a square, as quickly and correctly as possible. In each trial, the target is preceded by a prime that is also a diamond or square, and therefore able to elicit the same motor responses as the target (Fig. 1a). If prime and target are linked to the same response (diamond preceded by diamond, square preceded by square), they are called "consistent" (also "congruent", "compatible"); if they are linked to different motor responses (diamond preceded by square, square preceded by diamond), they are called "inconsistent" (also "incongruent", "incompatible"; Fig. 1b). The time interval between onset of the prime and onset of the target is called "stimulus onset asynchrony" (SOA). Typically, SOAs up to 100 milliseconds (ms) are employed.
  Priming effects occur when the prime influences the motor response to the target: consistent primes speed responses to the target, whereas inconsistent primes slow responses (Fig. 2). Priming effects in response times are calculated by taking the difference between response times in inconsistent and consistent trials. Apart from their effects on response speed, primes can greatly affect the rate of response errors (i.e., erroneous responses to the target): consistent primes rarely lead to errors, whereas error rates can become very high for inconsistent primes. In response times as well as error rates, priming effects typically increase with SOA, leading to the typical response priming patterns in Fig. 2. This implies that the more time is elapsing between prime and target, the larger the prime's influences on the response. For average response times of 350-450 ms, the response priming effect can become as large as 100 ms, making it one of the numerically largest effects in response time research.
  Results from many experiments show that the increase of priming with SOA occurs because the 
caption: Fig. 2: Typical time course of response priming effects (fictitious data). Consistent primes (blue) speed responses to the target, inconsistent primes (purple) slow them. In addition, consistent primes only rarely lead to response errors, whereas error rates can be very high for inconsistent primes. In response times as well as error rates, priming effects typically increase with SOA.
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