Effects of perceptual grouping on positive and negative priming

Dissociations between identity and location negative priming

Negative priming refers to the phenomenon of a slowed response time to a previously ignored distractor. Identity negative priming can be observed when the identity of a previous distractor is repeated as the target identity, and location negative priming can be observed when the spatial location of a previous distractor is repeated as the target location. This article reviewed and integrated previous findings and provided empirical evidence to show the dissociations between location and identity negative priming: (a) the removal of probe distractor impeded identity negative priming but not location negative priming; (b) identity negative priming was modulated by the distance between the target and distractor, while location negative priming was not; and (c) perceptual grouping of the target and distractor affected identity negative priming but not location negative priming.

An event-related potentials study of identity positive and negative priming

Although extensive research on negative priming has been conducted using behavioural measures, little is known about its brain correlates. Moreover, results from this scarce number of studies are rather contradictory. The aim of this study is to further explore the temporal course of negative and positive priming in the brain by means of an identity task in which participants had to recognize letters. Results showed that positive priming modulated both reaction times and brain waves in the 600-800 ms time-interval. These effects might be related to memory processes. However, whereas negative priming was reflected in slowed reaction times, no brain wave modulations were found. This pattern of results remarks the influence of task parameters when addressing the study of negative priming.