Auditory, visual, and cross-modal negative priming.

Auditory, visual, and cross-modal negative priming was investigated using a task in which participants judged whether stimuli were animals or musical instruments. Negative priming was observed, but only if the attended and the ignored primes evoked different responses. This pattern--negative priming after conflict, but not after nonconflict, primes--was demonstrated with visual stimuli and replicated with auditory stimuli, as well as across modalities, both auditory to visual and visual to auditory. Implications for theories of negative priming are discussed.