PERSISTENCE OF NEGATIVE PRIMING - STEADY-STATE OR DECAY

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 letter-matching 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.