Target-to-target repetition cost and location negative priming are dissociable: evidence for different mechanisms

In a location-selection task, the repetition of a prior distractor location as the target location would slow down the response. This effect is termed the location negative priming (NP) effect. Recently, it has been demonstrated that repetition of a prior target location as the current target location would also slow down response. Because such target-to-target repetition cost is similar to the phenomenon of inhibition of return (IOR), the possibility of a common mechanism underlying target-to-target repetition cost, location NP, and IOR has been proposed. The current study evaluated this hypothesis by combining a spatial-cuing task with a location NP task. The results of three experiments demonstrated that although IOR interacted with target-to-target repetition cost, there was no interaction between IOR and location NP. These findings suggest that target-to-target repetition cost is more likely to share a common mechanism with IOR, and target-to-target repetition cost and location NP should be attributed to different processes.