Automatic and Controlled Processing in Stroop Negative Priming: The Role of Attentional Set

The distinction between automatic and controlled attentional influences on priming effects was examined in a series of Stroop color-naming experiments. As expected, priming effects depended on the proportion of repeated trials—those in which a color word prime matched a following ink-color probe. However, responses were slower for repeated trials than for unrepeated trials when the proportion of repeated trials was no greater than chance (.25 with 4 colors). This effect was shown not to depend on slow-to-develop expectancies but did depend on the selective-attention requirements of the probe task. This dependence on probe task selection parallels an often reported result in the negative-priming literature (e.g., D. G. Lowe, 1979; S. P. Tipper & M. Cranston, 1985). Implications of these results for the distractor inhibition and episodic retrieval accounts of negative priming are discussed.