Negative priming is not task bound: A consistent pattern across naming and categorization tasks

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Experimental Psychology

Background:

• Negative priming is a cognitive phenomenon where reaction times slow for previously ignored stimuli.
• Previous research typically used identical tasks for prime and probe trials, leaving the task-dependency of negative priming unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether negative priming is task-bound.
• To examine if negative priming effects differ when tasks change between prime and probe trials.

Main Methods:

• Participants were assigned to one of four conditions, manipulating task type (naming vs. categorization) across prime and probe trials: name-name, name-categorize, categorize-name, and categorize-categorize.
• Reaction times were measured for responses to target words.

Main Results:

• Equivalent negative priming (approximately 22 msec) was observed for identical words, regardless of whether the task remained the same or changed between prime and probe trials.
• No negative priming effect was found for semantically related words when the semantic relation was based solely on category membership.

Conclusions:

• Negative priming for identical words is not task-specific and can generalize across different cognitive tasks.
• Semantic negative priming, at least for words related only by category, does not appear to occur in this experimental paradigm.