Negative identity priming is contingent on stimulus repetition.

Five experiments demonstrate that negative identity priming is contingent on stimulus repetition. In ignored repetition conditions, priming was initially positive and became negative as the number of repetitions increased. Moreover, it was repetition as a target, not as a distractor, that was critical for negative priming. The effects of repetition were general: They were found with both naming and same-different paradigms, verbal and pictorial material, familiar and unfamiliar stimuli, and vocal and manual responses. Findings support an activation-based model of negative priming (G. B. Malley & D. L. Strayer, 1995) and are problematic for the episodic retrieval model of negative priming (W. T. Neill & L. A. Valdes, 1992). Finally, the experiments did not replicate B. DeSchepper and A. Treisman's (1996) reported negative priming with nonrepeated novel shapes.