Negative identity priming is contingent on stimulus repetition.

Abstract

Five experiments demonstrate that negative identity priming is contingent on stimulus repetition. In ignored repetition conditions, priming was initially positive and became negative as the number of repetitions increased. Moreover, it was repetition as a target, not as a distractor, that was critical for negative priming. The effects of repetition were general: They were found with both naming and same-different paradigms, verbal and pictorial material, familiar and unfamiliar stimuli, and vocal and manual responses. Findings support an activation-based model of negative priming (G. B. Malley & D. L. Strayer, 1995) and are problematic for the episodic retrieval model of negative priming (W. T. Neill & L. A. Valdes, 1992). Finally, the experiments did not replicate B. DeSchepper and A. Treisman's (1996) reported negative priming with nonrepeated novel shapes.

Location negative priming in identity discrimination relies on location repetition

“…Moreover, the results paralleled the findings in the domain of identity negative priming (e.g., Strayer & Grison, 1999). Location negative priming was observed only when a small set of locations was repeatedly used.…”

“…After repetitive use of the same set of locations across the four quartiles, activation of locations in the fourth quartile would be expected to be quite high. Location negative priming should manifest only in later quartiles, as has been shown with identity negative priming (Strayer & Grison, 1999).…”

“…With a design conceptually similar to Strayer and Grison's (1999) Experiment 1, this experiment tested whether location negative priming is contingent on location repetition. Rather than using repeated or nonrepeated stimuli for identification, we used repeated or nonrepeated locations in an identification task.…”

“…According to the distance hypothesis proposed earlier and the findings obtained in Experiment 1, location negative priming was expected only in the long-distance condition when repeated locations were used (Experiment 2B). If one considers the fact that positive identity priming from nonrepeated stimuli has been shown to be less reliable (e.g., Grison & Strayer, 2001;Strayer & Grison, 1999), it would be of interest to investigate whether the positive priming effect found in Experiment 1 occurs only in the long-distance condition. If the positive priming effect is also the result of a selection process, the priming effect should be observed only when the target and the distractor are far apart.…”

“…In a series of experiments, Strayer and his colleagues (Grison & Strayer, 2001;Malley & Strayer, 1995;Strayer & Grison, 1999) demonstrated that identity negative priming is contingent on repeated stimuli. When nonrepeated stimuli are used as test items, negative priming is often absent, or instead, positive priming is observed.…”