In masked priming, a briefly presented prime stimulus is followed by a mask,
which in turn is followed by the task-relevant target. Under certain conditions,
negative compatibility effects (NCNCEs) occur, with impaired performance on
compatible trials (where prime and target indicate the same response) relative
to incompatible trials (where they indicate opposite responses). However, the
exact boundary conditions of NCEs, and hence the functional significance of this
effect, are still under discussion. In particular, it has been argued that the
NCE might be a stimulus-specific phenomenon of little general interest. This
paper presents new findings indicating that the NCE can be obtained under a
wider variety of conditions, suggesting that it reflects more general processes
in motor control. In addition, evidence is provided suggesting that prime
identification levels in forced choice tasks – usually employed to estimate
prime visibility in masked prime tasks – are affected by prior experience with
the prime (Exp. 1) as well as by direct motor priming (Exp. 2 & 3)