Identity-Based Crossmodal Negative Priming: Aftereffects of Ignoring in One Sensory Modality on Responding to Another Sensory Modality

Negative Priming (NP) refers to the phenomenon that responses towards previously ignored stimuli, as compared to new stimuli, are impaired. That is, NP is reflected in the performance on the probe display of a prime–probe sequence. NP is established in vision, audition and touch. In the current study, we presented participants with auditory, visual, and tactile manifestations of the same temporal patterns in order to measure NP across the senses. On each trial, the sensory modality shifted from the prime to the probe. Each prime and probe display consisted of a target and a distractor stimulus, presented to the same sensory modality. On some trials, the prime distractor repeated as probe target (ignored-repetition trials), on other trials the probe stimuli had not been involved in the prime display (control trials). We observed NP between audition and touch (Experiment 1) and between vision and audition (Experiment 2). These findings indicate that the processes underpinning NP can operate at an amodal, postperceptual level.

Short article: No evidence for a cue mismatch in negative priming

An experiment is reported in which the cue mismatch hypothesis of negative priming, an important novel variant of the mismatching hypothesis, was tested. A cue mismatch and a no mismatch condition were contrasted in a visual discrimination task. In the prime display of cue mismatch ignored-repetition trials, the colour of the prime distractor was different from the colour of the cue indicating the selection feature (coloured square). In probe displays, cue and repeated stimulus had the same colour. In the no mismatch condition, the visual cue was neutral in terms of colour (always black), so that there was always no cue mismatch between prime and probe displays. Contrary to the prediction of the cue mismatch hypothesis, the negative priming effect was not larger in the cue mismatch than in the no mismatch condition. The cue mismatch hypothesis must therefore be rejected. In contrast, the episodic retrieval account is consistent with the results.

The Time-Course of Masked Negative Priming

Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that reaction times and errors increase when a previously ignored prime distractor is presented as a target. In a variant of this task, the prime display is composed of only a single masked distractor that is followed by the simultaneous presentation of a target and a distractor in the probe display. In one experiment, we explore the time-course of masked NP using different variations of the prime-probe interval (short, medium, and long), and compare the results with time-course investigations of unmasked NP. We found clear evidence for a rapid-decay function of masked NP: With an increase in the prime-probe interval, masked NP decreased. This result is in line with the predictions of the temporal discrimination account and retrieval accounts of NP.

An Event-Related Potential Investigation of Varieties of Negative Priming

In an event-related potential (ERP) study of varieties of negative priming (NP), 20 participants performed two basic tasks, identification and localization. NP was established in response times (RTs) for two different conditions employed in the literature, DT (distractor-target shifts between subsequent displays), and DTTD (distractor-target reversals). With identification, there were two findings specific to DTTD: reduced amplitude of frontocentral P200 and earlier onset of response-locked lateralized readiness potential (R-LRP). The pattern suggests that DTTD probes were perceived as highly similar to the prime, causing a tendency to repeat the prime response. Identity-based DT had no significant ERP correlate but was accompanied by wrong preactivation in the stimulus-locked LRP (S-LRP). Regarding localization, P300 seemed reduced with the DTTD condition. However, current-source density (CSD) analysis suggested additional frontal and occipital N2 components, indicating inhibition of a tendency to repeat the prime response and persisting inhibition of the prime distractor location, respectively. A larger frontopolar N440 accompanying spatial NP suggested attempts to resolve conflicts occurring at late stages of processing. Data support the view of NP effects being caused by different subprocesses. Furthermore, distinct brain processes seem to underlie NP obtained from DT and DTTD conditions.

Negative Priming with Numbers: No Evidence for a Semantic Locus

Selective attention has been studied extensively using the negative priming (NP) paradigm. An important issue regards the representational level at which NP occurs. We investigated this issue by using numbers as stimuli. Because numbers have a well-defined semantic organization, which can be clearly measured by means of the distance effect, they are very suitable for testing the assumption that NP is situated at a central semantic level. Four experiments are presented in which the numerical distance between prime distractor and probe target was manipulated. The task was magnitude comparison. Target and distractor were defined on the basis of colour. In Experiment 1, all numbers were presented in Arabic format; NP was observed only with identical prime distractor and probe target, and no distance-related NP was observed. This could not be explained by a decay of inhibition since in Experiment 2 similar results were obtained with a shortened response-to-stimulus interval. Experiment 3 showed that these observations also hold for numbers presented verbally. Nevertheless, a cross-notational experiment with Arabic prime and verbal probe (Experiment 4) revealed no NP whatsoever and excluded the possibility that the absence of distance-related negative priming was the result of a fine-tuned inhibitory mechanism operating at the semantic level. The results are considered in the light of current theories of negative priming.