Revisiting the prime–probe contextual similarity effect on negative priming: The impact of cue variability

In previous studies on negative priming, the effect of prime–probe contextual similarity was not stable. On occasions, negative priming was greater when similar rather than different contexts were presented in a prime and a probe trial; however, at other times, negative priming was not affected by such manipulation. The current study demonstrates that the effect of contextual similarity can be optimised when cue variability is high. Cue variability was manipulated between-subject across Experiments 1a and 1b and as a within-subject variable in Experiment 2. Symbols were presented as contextual cues. The results indicated that when cue variability was high, the prime–probe contextual similarity effect was observed on negative priming; however, when cue variability was low, the contextual similarity effect and the negative priming effect were absent.