Auditory location negative priming: a case of feature mismatch.

In an auditory four-alternative forced choice localization task, participants had to localize one of two simultaneously presented sounds while ignoring the location of the second sound. Negative priming--that is, slowed-down responses to a location that had to be ignored in the previous trial--was found only when the sound at the repeated location changed between prime and probe. There was also no increase in prime response errors to the probes of ignored repetition trials. These findings allow for the conclusion that auditory location priming is caused by feature mismatch only and that other mechanisms, such as inhibition of ignored locations or episodic retrieval of transfer-inappropriate prime information, do not play a role.