Negative Priming as a Memory Phenomenon

Abstract

Abstract. Reactions to recently ignored stimuli are slowed down or more error prone when compared to reactions to control stimuli. This so-called negative priming effect has been traditionally investigated in the area of selective attention. More recent theory developments conceptualize the negative priming effect as a memory phenomenon. This review presents four models to explain the phenomenon as well as their essential empirical evidence. The review also considers several negative priming characteristics - that is stimulus modality, prime selection and prime response requirement, probe interference, stimulus repetition, aging and thought disorders, and physiological correlates. On these bases, it is concluded that only the distractor inhibition and the episodic retrieval models have survived empirical testing so far. Whereas evidence has increased that negative priming clearly obeys memory retrieval principles, the distractor inhibition model has lost much of its persuasiveness within recent years.