Spatial Negative Priming, but Not Inhibition of Return, with Central (Foveal) Displays

Abstract

The view persists that the inhibition of return (IOR) and the spatial negative priming (SNP) phenomena may be produced by a common "orientation inhibition" mechanism (e.g., Christie & Klein, 2001), held to arise during the processing of peripherally delivered (parafoveal) visual events. Both IOR and SNP effects are present when responding to recently to-be-ignored distractor events is delayed. Since an SNP effect has been produced using centrally located distracters (visual angle of about 2.5˚ or less), a common mechanism view would require that these locations generate orientation inhibition, which then cause of the SNP effect. We report past results and an experiment that reject the common mechanism view. Subjects completed four tasks; two, 1-response tasks, using either central (Task 1) or peripheral (Task 2: IOR) event locations, and two, 4-response tasks, again, using central (Task 3: SNP-central) or peripheral (Task 4: SNP-peripheral) locations. Trials occurred in pairs; first the prime (a target or a distractor), then the probe (target only). Critically, neither distractor-nor target-occupied prime locations produced either inhibitory (SNP effect) or positive after-effects, respectively, in Task 1. Seemingly, centrally located events do not generate orientation inhibition and so, unlike the IOR effect, this inhibition does not cause the SNP-central phenomenon.

The negative priming paradigm: An update and implications for selective attention

“…These results are in line with arguments from other attention paradigms that also support the claim that object location is processed in a different way than object identity (Constantinidis & Steinmetz, 2005;Johnston & Pashler, 1990;Lamy & Tsal, 2000;Soto & Blanco, 2004). On top of that, there is an ongoing debate over whether the spatial NP effect in vision in fact reflects processes that lead to inhibition of return (IOR; e.g., Buckolz, Fitzgeorge, & Knowles, 2012;Christie & Klein, 2001;Milliken, Tipper, Houghton & Lupianez, 2000) and thus should be separated from identity NP effects altogether.…”

Recently inhibited responses are avoided for both masked and nonmasked primes in a spatial negative priming task

“…The automated nature of location processing is further indicated by the fact that it takes place even when location discrimination is not needed to perform the task (e.g., on IOR tasks [Mulckhuyse & Theeuwes, 2010] or on Simon tasks [Hommel, 1993]). The utility of such information was illustrated by Buckolz, Fitzgeorge, and Knowles (2011), who found no inhibitory aftereffects in a one-response task using central locations. They claimed that this absence did not result because location discrimination had not occurred; they noted that it took place automatically, in spite of task demands that did not require it.…”

Negative Priming 1985 to 2015: A Measure of Inhibition, the Emergence of Alternative Accounts, and the Multiple Process Challenge

“…One study that did report this comparison found early posterior components that were similar for IR and AR trials (Gibbons et al, 2006). These researchers concluded that the mechanisms responsible for inhibition of return also contribute to locationbased negative priming (see also Christie & Klein, 2001;Houghton & Tipper, 1994;Milliken et al, 2000; but see Buckolz et al, 2012). Thus, as with identity-based negative priming, additional work is needed to clarify whether there are early components that are uniquely related to IR effects, rather than shared with AR effects.…”