Response conflict reverses priming: A replication

Abstract

Subjects named target words that followed a masked prime word of 33-msec (Experiments 1A and 1B) or 200-msec (Experiment 2) duration. The target word was either presented alone or accompanied by an interleaved distractor word. Targets presented alone were named more quickly following an identical prime than following an unrelated prime (repetition priming). In Experiment lA, targets with distractors were named more slowly following an identical prime than following an unrelated prime (negative priming), replicating Milliken, Joordens, Merikle, and Seiffert (Psycfwlogical Review, 1998). In Experiments 1B and 2, repetition priming was reduced, although not reversed, for targets with distractors. The results of all three experiments are opposite to the usual finding of enhanced priming for perceptually degraded targets and suggest that response conflict engages retrospective mechanisms that counteract the facilitatory effects of priming.If one either attends to a word or passively perceives it, reaction time (RT) is typically facilitated ifthe same word soon appears as a target for response (repetition priming). Responses to words or objects that are related to the initially perceived word are also likely to be facilitated (semantic priming or associative priming). However, if a word is deliberately ignored, responses to the same word, a related word, or a related object may subsequently be retarded relative to responses to an unrelated word or object (Neill, 1977;Neill & Westberry, 1987;Tipper & Baylis, 1987;Tipper & Driver, 1988; Vee, 1991). The latter effect, negative priming, has usually been demonstrated in selective attention tasks, in which target stimuli are accompanied by distracting stimuli. Thus, on a prime trial, the subject responds to a target while ignoring a distractor; negative priming occurs if the prime-trial distractor reappears as the target stimulus on a subsequentprobe trial. It has therefore been commonly assumed that negative priming is a consequence of selective attention to the prime-trial target.Selective attention on the probe trial also appears to be critical to negative priming. Although in some experiments negative priming has been found without distracting stimuli on probe trials (Neill, Terry, & Valdes, 1994;Neill & Westberry, 1987), the more typical finding is that negative priming is reduced (Moore, 1994) or even reversed (Lowe, 1979;Tipper & Cranston, 1985) for nonconflict probes. A series of experiments by Milliken and colleagues suggests that selective attention on the probe trial may in fact be sufficient to cause negative priming, Portions of this research were presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Chicago, November 1996. We are indebted to Maria Cianciulli, Heather Clark, Jennifer Hein, and Christopher Nuzzi for assistance with data collection. We are also grateful to Bruce Milliken, Michael Kane, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on our initial manuscript. Please direct correspondence to W. T. Neill, Department of Psychology, State U...

Deeper processing at target selection increases the magnitude of negative priming

“…The latter observation is consistent with findings ofpostselection positive priming effects in lexical decision tasks (Koriat, 1981). The combined results, however, conflict with theories that explain negative and positive priming effects in terms ofprime-probe similarity (Neill, 1997;Neill & Kahan, 1999). Neill (1997) proposed that priming effects are based on one's retrieval of recent memories about how one has dealt with similar stimuli in the past.…”

“…Whereas variations in the level of processing at the target selection stage influenced the degree of negative priming, variations at the response selection stage affected positive priming. These results challenge recent assertions that positive and negative priming are driven by memory retrieval mechanisms (Neill & Kahan, 1999). According to episodic retrieval theory, probe processing triggers the retrieval of how one has dealt with a previously presented stimulus item that possesses similar characteristics.…”

“…These views are shared, in part, by recent revisions to the episodic retrieval theory of positive and negative priming effects (Neill & Kahan, 1999;Neill & Mathis, 1998). In these revisions, Neill and his colleagues proposed that transfer appropriate/inappropriate processing plays a role in priming effects.…”

Feature mismatch effects in auditory negative

“…Thus, it appears that mere exposure to a prime sound can impair future responding to that stimulus. Similar results have also been observed in visual investigations of negative priming (Milliken & Joordens, 1996;Milliken et al, 1998;Milliken, Lupiáñez, Debner, & Abello, 1999;Moore, 1994;Neill & Kahan, 1999;Ortells & Tudela, 1996), raising similar questions about whether an attention-based explanation is adequate to account for negative priming in the visual modality. Still, Mondor et al's (2005) results are unique because they demonstrate that overtly selecting against a prime sound can actually weaken negative priming for auditory stimuli.…”

Bayesian tests to quantify the result of a replication attempt.

“…We now re-analyze these results with our Bayesian replication t test, assuming that Experiment 2A from Milliken et al (1998) is the original study and Experiments 1A and 1B from Neill and Kahan (1999) are the replication attempts. The results are presented in Table 5.…”