On the control of single-prime negative priming: The effects of practice and time course.

Abstract

Single-prime negative priming refers to the phenomenon wherein repetition of a prime as the probe target results in delayed response. Sometimes this effect has been found to be contingent on participants' unawareness of the primes, and sometimes it has not. Further, sometimes this effect has been found to be eliminated when the prime could predict the following probe target, and sometimes it has not. An integrative account is postulated to account for these findings. Three experiments supported this account by demonstrating that (a) regardless of the proportion of prime repetition, negative priming was the default effect; (b) the control mechanism was triggered to activate the prime after there was enough practice for the detection of the contingency between the prime and probe; and (c) it took time for the control mechanism to overcome the negative-priming effect and produce a positive-priming effect.