The time-course of masked negative priming

Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that reaction times and errors increase when a previously ignored prime distractor is presented as a target. In a variant of this task, the prime display is composed of only a single masked distractor that is followed by the simultaneous presentation of a target and a distractor in the probe display. In one experiment, we explore the time-course of masked NP using different variations of the prime-probe interval (short, medium, and long), and compare the results with time-course investigations of unmasked NP. We found clear evidence for a rapid-decay function of masked NP: With an increase in the prime-probe interval, masked NP decreased. This result is in line with the predictions of the temporal discrimination account and retrieval accounts of NP.