Electrophysiological evidence for size invariance in masked picture repetition priming

This experiment examined invariance in object representations through measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) to pictures in a masked repetition priming paradigm. Pairs of pictures were presented where the prime was either the same size or half the size of the target object and the target was either presented in a normal orientation or was a normal sized mirror reflection of the prime object. Previous masked repetition priming studies have found a cascade of priming effect sensitive to perceptual (N190/P190) and semantic (N400) properties of the stimulus. This experiment found that both early (N190/P190 effects) and later effects (N400) were invariant to size, whereas only the N190/P190 effect was invariant to mirror reflection. The combination of a small prime and a mirror reflected target led to no significant priming effects. Taken together, the results of this set of experiments suggests that object recognition, more specifically, activating an object representation, occurs in a hierarchical fashion where overlapping perceptual information between the prime and target is necessary, although not always sufficient, to activate a higher level semantic representation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.