Responses to recently ignored stimuli may be slower or less accurate than to new stimuli. This negative priming effect decays over time when delay is randomized within subjects, but not when delay varies between subjects. In Experiment 1, response-stimulus intervals (RSI) of 500 and 4,000 ms were randomized within subjects in a target localization task. Negative priming of ignored locations diminished with longer delay. However, no significant decay was obtained when RSI and the preceding RSI were equal. Similar results were obtained when RSI and preceding RSI were deliberately confounded by blocking (Experiment 2). Negative priming appears to depend on temporal discriminability of the priming episode.

Responses to recently ignored stimuli may be slower and less accurate than responses to new stimuli. Neill and Westberry (1987) found that such negative priming effects dissipated within a 2-s interval between response and the next stimulus, the response-stimulus interval (RSI). However, experiments by Tipper, Weaver, Cameron, Brehaut, and Bastedo (1991) found negative priming persisted unchanged over RSIs from 1,350 to 6,600 ms. Our experiments used a lettermatching procedure in which target letters were flanked by irrelevant letters. Negative priming was manifested by longer reaction times and more errors to letters that had appeared as flankers in the preceding trial. RSI was varied from 500 to 8,000 ms. Negative priming diminished over the RSI, particularly within the 1st second. This effect did not depend on the presence or absence of temporal uncertainty or on Ss' awareness of intertrial relations. We propose an episodic retrieval theory to account for negative priming phenomena.

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