Construction and validation of a new perceptual priming task: The contrasted word task

In clinical neuropsychology, different rehabilitation techniques – e.g., vanishing cues, spaced retrieval, errorless learning – developed for patients with memory impairments are considered to make use of the preserved implicit memory abilities shown by these patients, and notably the perceptual priming effects (Harrison et al., 2007). It might be therefore important for clinician neuropsychologists to determine whether these abilities are preserved or not in their patients. However, and quite surprisingly, assessment tools aimed at assessing implicit memory abilities in brain damaged patients are lacking. The aim of this study was to build and validate a new perceptual priming task – the contrasted word task – which could be used by neuropsychologists in their clinical practice.
Seventy-two young healthy participants were included in this study, and were administered the contrasted word task in which 60 words counterbalanced in 2 orders and 3 types of priming (Visual; Auditory; New) emerged gradually from a white background on a computer screen. Subjects were asked to press the response key when they thought they had recognized the word. Results show a perceptual priming effect which is specific to the exposure modality (i.e., no inter-modality transfer), proving the efficacy of the contrasted word task to highlight a facilitated identification for words that were shown previously, and confirming the perceptual specificity of the priming effect (Schacter, 1992).