Temporal Negative Priming

Negative priming provides one useful measure of attentional focus and cognitive control, requirements of most domains of life (driving, work, play, etc.). Until now, 2 types of negative priming have been identified: identity negative priming and location negative priming. These effects are of particular interest because individuals who have difficulty ignoring distraction (e.g., individuals with schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder) exhibit reduced levels of negative priming. In the present experiments (N = 187), we report an entirely new type of negative priming based on when in time a target appears (temporal negative priming) rather than its identity or spatial location. Results indicate that responses to a target's temporal position were impaired when a distractor previously appeared at that same relative temporal position. In addition, temporal positioning was teased apart from response-based mechanisms and both were found to independently contribute to temporal negative priming. This result indicates that mechanisms of cognitive control trigger both response-based and memory-based processes.