From Sunshine to Double Arrows: an Evaluation Window Account of Negative Compatibility Effects

In category priming, target stimuli are to be sorted into 2 categories. Prime stimuli preceding targets typically facilitate processing of targets when primes and targets are members of the same category, relative to the case in which both stem from different categories, a positive compatibility effect (PCE). But negative compatibility effects (NCEs) are also sometimes observed. An evaluation window account (Klauer, Teige-Mocigemba, & Spruyt, 2009) of PCE and NCE in evaluative priming (category good versus category bad) is applied to masked arrow priming (Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998; category left versus category right). Key principles of the account are that participants evaluate incoming evidence across a time window, and decisions about stimulus category are driven by changes in evidence weighted according to the Weber-Fechner law, leading to NCE for primes falling outside the time window and PCE for primes inside the time window. In Experiments 1-4, factors considered obligatory for NCE by current accounts of arrow priming are successively removed; yet, NCE remained intact as predicted by the evaluation window account. Furthermore, the evaluation window account, but none of the current accounts, predicts NCE without a stimulus intervening between prime and target at intermediate prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (Experiment 5) and when target onset comes as a surprise (Experiment 6). We conclude that the evaluation window account describes a hitherto overlooked mechanism that contributes to PCE and NCE in arrow priming and that it appears to generalize beyond the confines of evaluative priming to the diverse class of category-priming paradigms.