title: Active masks and active inhibition: a comment on Lleras and Enns (2004) and on Verleger, Jaskowski, Aydemir, van der Lubbe, and Groen (2004).
abstract: Verleger, Jaskowski, Aydemir, van der Lubbe, and Groen and Lleras and Enns have argued that negative compatibility effects (NCEs) obtained with masked primes do not reflect self-inhibition processes in motor control. Instead, NCEs are assumed to reflect activation of the response opposite to the prime, triggered by the presence of prime/targetlike features in the mask. Thus, no NCEs should be elicited when masks do not contain such task-relevant features. In Experiments 1 and 3, the authors demonstrate that NCEs can be obtained when masks contain only irrelevant features. Experiment 2 demonstrates that positive compatibility effects (PCEs) will occur with such masks when masked primes are presented peripherally. These results are inconsistent with the mask-induced activation accounts but are in line with the self-inhibition hypothesis of the NCE. Although perceptual interactions and mask-induced motor activations may contribute to NCEs under certain conditions, they cannot provide a full explanation for these effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Friederike
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6314-6491
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schlaghecken
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4338-1056
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Eimer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time