From sunshine to double arrows: An evaluation window account of negative compatibility effects.

Abstract

In category priming, target stimuli are to be sorted into 2 categories. Prime stimuli preceding targets typically facilitate processing of targets when primes and targets are members of the same category, relative to the case in which both stem from different categories, a positive compatibility effect (PCE). But negative compatibility effects (NCEs) are also sometimes observed. An evaluation window account (Klauer, Teige-Mocigemba, & Spruyt, 2009) of PCE and NCE in evaluative priming (category good versus category bad) is applied to masked arrow priming (Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998; category left versus category right). Key principles of the account are that participants evaluate incoming evidence across a time window, and decisions about stimulus category are driven by changes in evidence weighted according to the Weber-Fechner law, leading to NCE for primes falling outside the time window and PCE for primes inside the time window. In Experiments 1-4, factors considered obligatory for NCE by current accounts of arrow priming are successively removed; yet, NCE remained intact as predicted by the evaluation window account. Furthermore, the evaluation window account, but none of the current accounts, predicts NCE without a stimulus intervening between prime and target at intermediate prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (Experiment 5) and when target onset comes as a surprise (Experiment 6). We conclude that the evaluation window account describes a hitherto overlooked mechanism that contributes to PCE and NCE in arrow priming and that it appears to generalize beyond the confines of evaluative priming to the diverse class of category-priming paradigms.

Mask-triggered thrust reversal in the negative compatibility effect

“…Moreover, response priming can vary independently of discrimination performance: Priming can increase with prime-target SOA, while the ability to discriminate the prime decreases (Albrecht, Klapötke, & Mattler, 2010;Mattler, 2003;Vorberg et al, 2003). The present data suggest the same property for the NCE: It occurs under substantial masking , as well as with clearly visible primes (Jaśkowski, 2007b;Klauer & Dittrich, 2010), and it seems to build up with increasing SOA, while prime discrimination performance is decreasing. This double dissociation between the priming effect and discrimination of the prime strongly suggests that awareness of the prime cannot explain the time course of the NCE (T. Schmidt, 2007; T. Schmidt & Vorberg, 2006).…”

“…Its properties may all be explained by information persistence in familiar parts of the visuomotor system-for example, an integration phase in the buildup of motor activity. Note that our notion of information persistence is similar to Klauer and Dittrich's (2010) idea that the information from prime, mask, and target features is sampled during an Bevaluation windowŝ tarting at mask onset. This entails the idea of information integration over time and might be equivalent to assuming a short-term buffer.…”

“…Klauer and Dittrich (2010) showed that an NCE can be obtained even in the absence of any mask between prime and target, leaving only response inhibition as a viable explanation. Similarly, Vorberg (2005) has demonstrated an NCE with stimuli not containing any antiprime features.…”

“…This negative compatibility effect (NCE), discovered by Eimer and Schlaghecken (1998), has been used in many experiments to study the time course of response inhibition (for reviews, see Klauer & Dittrich, 2010;Sumner, 2007). Eimer and Schlaghecken (1998) employed double arrows (<< or >>) as the primes and targets.…”

Response Priming with More or Less Biological Movements as Primes

“…One could suggest that the decrease of the compatibility effect at a SOA of 800 ms will continue and result in a sign change, that is, negative compatibility effects or negative compatibility effects with long SOAs, corresponding to the negative effects found using simple (nonbiological) motion primes (Bermeitinger, 2013) or the classic masked response priming experiments (Aron et al, 2003;Eimer, 1999;Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998Jaśkowski, Jaśkowski, Bialunska, Tomanek, & Verleger, 2008;Klauer & Dittrich, 2010;Lleras & Enns, 2005). Thus, in Experiment 4, two very long SOAs of 920 ms and 1320 ms were used.…”