[Determinants of occurrence of negative priming for novel shapes with matching paradigm]

We examined the effect of relation between interferences from distractor and inhibitory mechanism on the occurrence of negative priming, by using a matching paradigm. The ease of perceptual target selection was determined by magnitudes of interference. Stereoscopic depth was used to manipulate the relative position of a target, a distractor and a standard figure. When the ease of perceptual target selection was manipulated by separation of the target from the distractor in depth, positive priming occurred. However, the ease of target selection turned out to be unnecessary in the occurrence of priming effects. When the distractor and the standard figure were displayed at the same depth plane, where the distractor was supposed to interfere with the encoding of a standard figure, negative priming occurred consistently regardless of the ease of perceptual target selection. This study suggests that inhibitory mechanism contributes to the suppression of inappropriate processes by distractor, and inhibitory mechanism actively keeps distractors from interfering with standard figures.