Repetition priming is driven by the modulation of high-level, but not low-level, visual representations

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Tobias Egner¹, Ricardo Morales Torres¹, Peter S. Whitehead¹; ¹Duke University

People are faster at classifying a previously seen stimulus than when they first encounter it (repetition priming). Classifying an object involves the processing of both low-level (e.g., color, shape) and high-level (e.g., category) visual features, but it is currently unclear to what degree each of these features contribute to the behavioral facilitation observed in repetition priming. We addressed this question in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects classified objects according to their origin (living/non-living) or size (large/small), with each object being presented twice. Employing a recurrent neural network, we modeled low- and high-level visual feature representations of each stimulus to predict behavior. Only high-level features influenced behavior, specifically, by modulating reaction time during the initial stimulus classification. This suggests that behavioral facilitation results from bypassing high-level feature processing on second presentation. In Experiment 2 we tested this hypothesis directly with neuroimaging data by combining the same protocol with fMRI and representational similarity analysis (RSA). We found that high-level visual features were represented in frontoparietal cortex (the Angular Gyrus and Inferior Frontal Gyrus), and that stronger neural representation of high-level features was associated with longer reaction times. Crucially — consistent with the behavioral findings of Experiment 1— high-level features were more strongly represented during the first stimulus presentation. Taken together, our results indicate that stimulus repetition strongly modulates the processing of high-level but not low-level visual features, and that behavioral repetition priming effects result from people not having to re-represent the high-level features of re-encountered visual stimuli.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Priming