Temporal and sequential negative priming generalise across visual and auditory modalities and are dependent on relative rather than absolute speed.

Abstract

Prior work has found a negative priming effect for a sequence, and more purely time-based negative priming has also been identified. Although sequential effects have been reported with both visual and auditory stimuli, only visual stimuli have been used in experiments examining purely temporal negative priming. In this article, sequential and temporal negative priming are compared across modalities. Prime trials included random presentation of a target (auditory bird chirp or visual X), a non-target (auditory dog bark or visual O), and two neutral stimuli (auditory computer beeps or empty visual boxes). Probe trials included random presentation of the target and three neutral stimuli. Participants indicated the temporal location of the target. On 88% of the trials, participants (N = 119 in Experiment 1; N = 65 in Experiment 2) indicated the location of the non-target stimulus from the prime trial. Results showed an increase in response time when the temporal location of the probe's target was the same as the location of the non-target stimulus from the prime trial, but this only occurred when the prime was presented more slowly. Experiment 2 tested, and falsified, the hypothesis that a fixed amount of time on the prime is necessary to bind features of the non-target stimulus with temporal and sequential positions. Together, these data show that sequential and temporal negative priming effects generalise across modality and that relative rather than fixed timing is critical. Implications for theories of negative priming are discussed.