The time-course of negative priming: Little evidence for episodic trace retrieval

Abstract

An episodic trace retrieval (ETR) explanation of negative priming (NP) predicts that the NP effect should be sensitive to the tuning of delays between trials (Neill and Valdes, 1992; Neill, Valdes, Terry, and Gorfein, 1992). Specifically, according to ETR, (1) NP is affected by the response- stimulus interval (RSI) before the prime display, and (2) NP decays when RSI is manipulated within groups but not when RSI is manipulated between groups. Two localization tasks and two identification tasks are reported that question the reliability of these findings. The results suggest that there is little in the time-course literature that uniquely supports the ETR theory of NP. Instead, the results seem more compatible with either a dual-mechanism account (Kane, May, Hasher, Rahhal, and Stoltzfus, 1997) or an integrative approach that incorporates both memory and attention processes (Milliken, Joordens, Merikle, and Seiffert, 1998).