NEGATIVE PRIMING IS NOT TASK BOUND - A CONSISTENT PATTERN ACROSS NAMING AND CATEGORIZATION TASKS

When a word that was a to-be-ignored flanker on an initial prime trial becomes the target on the subsequent probe trial, responding to that word on the probe trial is slowed, a phenomenon called negative primin g. Virtually all prior studies have required subjects to perform the s ame task on both the prime and the probe trials. Thus, the extent to w hich negative priming is task bound is uncertain. We manipulated task factorially on the prime and probe trials, resulting in four groups: n ame-name, name-categorize, categorize-name, and categorize-categorize. The results showed equivalent negative priming of about 22 msec both within and between tasks for identical words, but no negative priming for semantically related words from the same category. These findings suggest (1) that negative priming for identical words can readily cros s task types; and (2) that semantic negative priming does not occur fo r words, at least when categorical relatedness alone determines the se mantic relation.