Eliminating flanker effects and negative priming in the flankers task: Evidence for early selection

Reports of negative priming in the absence of flanker effects (Fox, 1995) p rovide support for the notion that unattended stimuli are identified. I eva luated the hypothesis that such results are the outcome of attentional leak age to the flanker location. In Experiment 1, I assessed flanker effects an d negative priming as a function of target-flanker proximity (.9 degrees an d 2.7 degrees for near and far flankers, respectively) and of attention cui ng to the target location (precued vs, uncued) on the prime trials. I repor t larger flanker effects in uncued than in precued conditions, and larger e ffects for near than for far flankers. More critically, when attention was precued, both flanker effects and negative priming vanished for far flanker s. In Experiment 2, I show that the latter result was not linked to prime-p robe contextual similarity (Neill, 1997). These results demonstrate that se lective target processing is possible when attention is optimally focused t o the target location.