Dissociative Prime-Probe Contextual Similarity Effects on Negative Priming and Repetition Priming : A Challenge to Episodic Retrieval as a Unified Account of Negative Priming

This study examined the dependence of repetition priming (RP) and negative priming (NP) as a function of prime-probe contextual similarity in a paradigm in which participants were required to respond to a letter flanked by incompatible distractor letters (e.g., ABA). Experiment 1 used prime and probe display containing a pair of quot;+quot; symbols that were presented horizontally or vertically. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated whether the letter triplets contained the quot;!quot; symbol. In all experiments, regardless of whether the RP trials were intermixed with the NP trials (Experiment 2) or not (Experiment 3), RP was stronger in the prime-probe similar conditions than in the prime-probe dissimilar conditions, but NP was independent of prime-probe contextual similarity. These findings suggest that NP is not necessarily stronger in conditions in which episodic retrieval of the prime is more likely