No Negative Semantic Priming From Unconscious Flanker Words in Sight

In replicating 1 of the within-language conditions of E. Fox's (1996) Experiment 1, the authors confirmed that unattended words presented 2.4° above and below fixation are mostly unavailable to awareness. However, no negative semantic priming was observed in a lexical decision on a probe letter string appearing about 1 s later, which does not replicate Fox's finding. These results are compatible with the hypothesis underlying the present study, according to which positive semantic priming, if any, rather than negative semantic priming is expected in Fox's situation. The reason is that unavailability to awareness of the parafoveal words is not achieved by means of an act of selective inhibition combined with attentional diversion through masking but is achieved simply by means of perceptual degradation.