This study investigated the active inhibition of precued distractor locations. In this study, the distractor location was precued by an arrow. Experiment 1 indicated that a valid precue could facilitate target localization. Experiment 2 demonstrated that when conflict trials were included, the distractor precue benefit was eliminated. Experiment 3 further showed that active inhibition required time to operate. The distractor precue benefit was observed only when the stimulus onset asynchrony between the precue and the target and distractor display was long. Experiment 4 illustrated that the benefit was not contingent on precuing the distractor response. Experiment 5 indicated that the benefit of distractor precuing was not due to the activation of target locations, and Experiment 6 showed that this benefit was due to attentional inhibition. Finally, Experiment 7 demonstrated that active inhibition of spatial location required an attentional resource to operate. These results indicated how a top-down mechanism exerted control on distractor locations.

The current study investigated attentional control through active inhibition of the identity of the distractor. Adapting a Stroop paradigm, the distractor word was presented in advance and made to disappear, followed by the presentation of a Stroop stimulus. Participants were instructed to inhibit the distractor in order to reduce its interference. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the distractor precue facilitated Stroop color naming by reducing Stroop interference. Experiment 3 demonstrated beneficial effects of the distractor precue when congruent trials were introduced. Experiment 4 showed that the distractor precue benefit was observed when the cue and target were in different forms. Experiment 5 indicated that if the item used as the cue became the target, naming it took longer in order to overcome the inhibitory effect. Experiment 6 demonstrated that the benefit of the distractor precue was not observed when the cue was uninformative. Finally, Experiment 7 demonstrated that active inhibition required working-memory resources to operate. This study suggests that the best explanation for the distractor precue benefit is the active inhibition account.

Negative priming refers to delayed responses to previously ignored distractors. Unlike conventional studies of negative priming in which the attentional selection of a target against its distractors is required in prime trials (prime-selection negative priming), in single-prime negative priming, a prime stimulus is presented briefly. To further investigate the nature of single-prime negative priming, its properties were examined. In Experiment 1, the proportion of repetition was varied. The effect of single-prime negative priming was reduced when the proportion of repetition was high. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that high memory load could hamper the single-prime negative priming effect. Overall, the current study indicates controlled processing in single-prime negative priming and similarities between single-prime negative priming and prime-selection negative priming.

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slower responses to a target presented at a previously cued vs. uncued location. The present study investigated the role of memory retrieval in IOR by manipulating the contextual similarity between two successive targets in the target-target IOR paradigm. Successive targets were presented in either the same color (same-context condition) or different colors (different-context condition). Results of two experiments showed that IOR was greater in the same-context than the different-context condition. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that this context effect occurs with long response times (RTs), suggesting that memory retrieval, which requires time to manifest, plays an important role in IOR.

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1072In order to achieve successful target selection, attention should be paid to the object that matches the target template, and the distractor should be ignored. However, the distractor is not simply kept unprocessed. The effect of negative priming (NP) refers to the observation that, when a distractor is repeated as the target, the response to the target is slower than that in the control condition (Tipper, 1985;Tipper & Cranston, 1985; for reviews, see Fox, 1995;May, Kane, & Hasher, 1995;Neill, Valdes, & Terry, 1995). The NP paradigm is used widely to investigate the underlying processes and aftereffects of selective attention.However, one question pertaining to NP has not yet been completely resolved: If this phenomenon merely reflects the aftereffect of attentional selection, why are probe distractors required to observe the NP effect? A typical NP task comprises couplets of prime and probe displays. In the ignored repetition (IR) condition, the prime distractor is repeated as a probe target; in the control condition, the prime stimuli are not repeated in the following probe trial. NP is measured as the difference in reaction times (RTs)-and sometimes in error rates (ERs)-between the control and IR conditions. It has been demonstrated that, when the distractor was absent during all the probe displays, the NP effect was eliminated (Lowe, 1979;Milliken, Joordens, Merikle, & Seiffert, 1998;Tipper, Brehaut, & Driver, 1990;Tipper & Cranston, 1985). With a Stroop color-naming task, Lowe's Experiment 4 demonstrated that identity NP was eliminated when there was no probe distractor word. In fact, an effect of positive priming was found when the probe distractor word was replaced by the color patch (23 vs. 21 msec). In a letter-naming task, Tipper and Cranston observed significant NP when the probe distractor was present ( 17 msec). However, response in the IR condition was faster than that in the control condition (14 msec) when the probe distractor was consistently absent. In a word-naming task, Milliken et al. (1998) also found significant NP when the probe distractor was present ( 8 msec), but they observed significant positive priming (5 msec) when the probe distractor was consistently absent. These findings are theoretically important and provide interesting insights into the NP phenomenon. Distractor Competition HypothesisAccording to a computational model of the inhibition account of NP (Houghton & Tipper, 1994), the effect of distractor inhibition is manifested during a competition between a probe target and a probe distractor. If there is no such competition (i.e., when the probe distractor is absent), it should be easy to respond to the target. As a result, the NP effect should not surface.The study of probe distractor competition can support this hypothesis. According to the distractor competition hypothesis, NP is manifested only when the probe distractor is competitive. In other words, even when the probe distractor is present, if it is not competitive, NP should not be observed. To test this predict...

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