Visual Antipriming Effect: Evidence from Chinese Character Identification

Marsolek et al. (2006) have differentiated antipriming effects from priming effects, by adopting a novel priming paradigm comprised of four phases that include a baseline measurement. The general concept of antipriming supports the overlapping representation theory of knowledge. This study extended examination of the Marsolek et al. (2006) paradigm by investigating antipriming and priming effects in a series of Chinese character identification tasks. Results showed that identification accuracy of old characters was significantly higher than baseline measurements (i.e., the priming effect), while identification accuracy of novel characters was significantly lower than baseline measurements (i.e., the antipriming effect). This study demonstrates for the first time the effect of visual antipriming in Chinese character identification. It further provides new evidence for the overlapping representation theory of knowledge, and supports generalizability of the phenomenon to Chinese characters.