Identity-Based Crossmodal Negative Priming: Aftereffects of Ignoring in One Sensory Modality on Responding to Another Sensory Modality

Abstract

Abstract Negative Priming (NP) refers to the phenomenon that responses towards previously ignored stimuli, as compared to new stimuli, are impaired. That is, NP is reflected in the performance on the probe display of a prime–probe sequence. NP is established in vision, audition and touch. In the current study, we presented participants with auditory, visual, and tactile manifestations of the same temporal patterns in order to measure NP across the senses. On each trial, the sensory modality shifted from the prime to the probe. Each prime and probe display consisted of a target and a distractor stimulus, presented to the same sensory modality. On some trials, the prime distractor repeated as probe target (ignored-repetition trials), on other trials the probe stimuli had not been involved in the prime display (control trials). We observed NP between audition and touch (Experiment 1) and between vision and audition (Experiment 2). These findings indicate that the processes underpinning NP can operate at an amodal, postperceptual level.