The Mechanisms of the Masked Priming That Do Not Work Jointly

Abstract

Over the past two decades, hundreds of articles have investigated the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon that masked stimuli reduce people's response performance to subsequent compatible stimuli, for example, the negative compatibility effect (NCE). Whether the NCE results from motor inhibition, object updating, or both is still being debated. We used the digital masked prime task for 3 consecutive days to strengthen stimulus-response associations in relevant and irrelevant contexts (whether the mask consisted of task-relevant features or not) and employed response time distribution analysis to investigate the contributions of motor inhibition and object updating to the NCE. The results showed that the NCE appeared in the irrelevant condition on days 2 and 3, and it increased with response latency on day 3. In contrast, in the relevant condition, the NCE occurred regardless of test day or response latency, and was unaffected by either. These different patterns of results indicated that the cause of the NCE was different in the relevant and irrelevant conditions. In the relevant condition, the results suggested that the NCE was solely due to object updating, whereas in the irrelevant condition, the results indicated that the NCE was solely due to motor inhibition. This study reconciled the previous debate and revealed the mechanisms by which unconscious information influences behavioral performance in different contexts.