Research Article

Evidence of Vocal and Manual Event

Files in Auditory Negative Priming
Susanne Mayr, Malte Möller, and Axel Buchner
Department of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany
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Abstract. Negative priming with auditory as well as with visual stimuli has been shown to involve the retrieval of prime response information as
evidenced by an increase of prime response errors to the probes of ignored repetition trials compared to control trials. We investigated whether
prime response retrieval processes were also present for response modalities other than manual responding. In an auditory four alternative forced
choice task participants either vocally or manually identified a target sound while ignoring a distractor sound. Negative priming was of equal size
in both response modalities. What is more, for both response modalities, there was evidence of increased prime response errors in ignored
repetition trials compared to control trials. The findings suggest that retrieval of event files of the prime episode including prime response
information is a general mechanism underlying the negative priming phenomenon irrespective of stimulus or response modality.

Keywords: audition, negative priming, event file integration, manual/verbal response modality

The impaired responding to a previously ignored stimulus –
which is called the negative priming effect – is an estab-
lished and robust phenomenon in the visual as well as the
auditory modality (see May, Kane, & Hasher, 1995; Mayr
& Buchner, 2007; Tipper, 2001). A model that has been pro-
posed – either as an alternative or in addition to the origi-
nally proposed inhibition model (Tipper, 1985, 2001;
Tipper & Cranston, 1985) – is the episodic retrieval model.
This model assumes that in ignored repetition trials the
probe target functions as a retrieval cue to the prime episode.
The model predicts negative priming due to retrieval of a
do-not-respond tag attached to the previously ignored stim-
ulus (Neill & Valdes, 1992) or due to retrieval of inappropri-
ate prime response information (Mayr & Buchner, 2006;
Rothermund, Wentura, & De Houwer, 2005). Either way,
the retrieved information conflicts with the requirement to
respond to the same stimulus when it becomes the probe tar-
get. Resolving this conflict takes time.
A considerable number of studies have reported evi-
dence in favor of the episodic retrieval model. Some studies
provided evidence that the size of the negative priming
effect is influenced by variables that usually determine
memory performance, such as the temporal discriminability
of the to-be-retrieved memory trace at the time of retrieval
(Mayr & Buchner, 2006; Neill, Valdes, Terry, & Gorfein,
1992) or the contextual similarity between encoding (prime)
and retrieval (probe; Chao & Yeh, 2008; Fox & de Fockert,
1998; Neill, 1997; Stolz & Neely, 2001; but see Wong,
2000). Another line of evidence showed that prime response
information is retrieved in ignored repetition but not in con-
trol trials. Rothermund et al. (2005) demonstrated that neg-
ative priming depends on a response change. If prime and
probe responses are identical the typical slowdown of
ignored repetition trials inverts into a positive priming effect.
This dependency of negative priming on a prime-to-probe
response change is explained by a mechanism retrieving
prime response information that is probe response incompat-
ible in the response change case, but compatible in the
response repetition case. An inhibition model cannot
account for such a Stimulus repetition · Response repetition
interaction. Instead, it implies that negative priming is
caused by inhibition of distracting information during the
prime that persists into the probe and interferes with
responding regardless of response repetition or change.
Support for the retrieval of prime response information also
comes from experiments showing for both the auditory and
the visual modality that the tendency to repeat the prime
response is significantly stronger in ignored repetition than
in control trials (Mayr & Buchner, 2006, 2010; Mayr,
Buchner, & Dentale, 2009). The presence of such a prime
response retrieval effect can be explained by automatic
retrieval of incompatible prime response information.
Retrieval of prime episode information is conceptually
equivalent to what has been called event files by Hommel
(1998, 2004). A number of recent studies have presented
evidence showing that stimulus features together with
response information are integrated into event files, the
retrieval of which can influence performance. Zmigrod
and Hommel (2009, 2010) presented evidence indicative
of spontaneous integration of auditory features (such as
pitch or location) and manual responses into event files by
showing that performance in a discrimination task was better
when the stimulus and response features of the first of two
consecutive sounds shared all or none of the stimulus and
response features of the second sound rather than when only
one of the features overlapped, that is, when a partial repe-
tition occurred. Partial repetition costs are explained by a
feature integration process that establishes an episodic trace

 2011 Hogrefe Publishing Experimental Psychology 2011; Vol. 58(5):353–360

DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000102
 354 S. Mayr et al.: Evidence of Vocal and Manual Event Files
containing links between the simultaneously presented fea-
tures and the response. These episodes are assumed to be
retrieved as a whole when at least one of the elements is
encountered again. Event file retrieval is unproblematic or
even beneficial for subsequent responding if all features
bound together are repeated. However, partial repetitions
lead to reactivation of misleading information which slows
down responding. The negative priming effect can be con-
ceptualized as a partial repetition cost that occurs when
retrieval of the prime episode is cued by the repetition of
the prime distractor but the concomitantly retrieved prime
response is incompatible with probe responding (for exam-
ples in the visual modality, see Frings, 2011; Frings,
Rothermund, & Wentura, 2007; Giesen & Rothermund,
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in press; Rothermund et al., 2005). Note that event files in
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terms of Hommel (1998) originally referred to stimulus
and response features of one object only. The idea that sev-
eral stimuli such as the target and the distractor in a standard
negative priming task can be integrated into one event file
including the prime response exceeds the original event file
concept. This extension of the concept is necessary to
explain negative priming effects that depend on response
repetition/change as demonstrated by Rothermund et al.
(2005; Frings et al., 2007) but also to explain prime response
retrieval effects as shown by Mayr and colleagues (2006,
2009, 2010).
All studies that have revealed evidence of prime
response retrieval in negative priming used very primitive
manual responses (but see Behrendt et al., 2010, who pres-
ent ERP evidence compatible with episodic retrieval in a
vocal naming task). Participants had to press specific
response buttons to identify target sounds or pictures. Retrie-
val-based interference may be facilitated by, or perhaps even
be restricted to, situations in which the prime response is
extremely simple and can be retrieved very easily. If so, then
we would expect a smaller, or perhaps even no contribution
of retrieval-based interference to the negative priming effect
with more complex responses such as verbalizations. In
addition, as will be explicated more fully in the Discussion
section, manual responses have special properties which
raise the possibility that prime response retrieval might
occur only for a very specific subset of the relevant trials.
To clarify, auditory negative priming has been observed with
vocalizations before (Banks, Roberts, & Ciranni, 1995), but
these effects could have been due mostly, if not exclusively,
to inhibition (Tipper, 1985, 2001; Tipper & Cranston, 1985)
or do-not-respond tags attached to the previously ignored
stimulus (Neill & Valdes, 1992) or both. It thus seemed the-
oretically important to investigate whether evidence for
prime response retrieval could be found with vocalizations,
and if so, to compare the size of this effect to that found with
simple manual responses.
1
To our knowledge there is one study in which the influence of manual versus verbal action preparation on identification performance of
masked arrows or spatial words was analyzed (Hommel & Müsseler, 2006). The results can be interpreted as evidence of feature integration
processes taking place during manual and vocal action preparation and visual stimulus identification. However, this paradigm to analyze the
so-called ‘‘action-effect blindness’’ is very different from the standard stimulus-response task usually applied to investigate feature
integration processes.
2
There were three participants older than 40 years. Statistical analyses without the three data sets did not change the pattern of results in any
way.
Experimental Psychology 2011; Vol. 58(5):353–360
Interestingly, evidence of event file integration is based
on simple (bi-)manual stimulus-response tasks (e.g.,
Hommel, 1998, 2005; Pösse, Waszak, & Hommel, 2006).
Here, too, it has yet to be shown that event file integration
can also be observed with more complex responses.1
In the experiment reported here, participants identified
the sounds played at one ear while ignoring the sounds
played at the other ear. Identification responses were given
either manually or vocally. If the prime response retrieval
mechanism were a general process that is not restricted to
very simple prime responses, then we should find a prime
response retrieval effect with manual but also with vocal
responding.
Method
Participants
Data of one participant were eliminated due to excessive
error frequencies (> .50). Six participants did not reach the
learning criterion. The final sample of 61 participants (52
females) ranged in age from 19 to 59 years (M = 25.6).2
Participants were tested individually and were either paid
or received course credit.
Materials
The stimuli were four synthesized sounds sampled with a
rate of 44.1 kHz. Sound generation followed the description
by Mondor, Leboe, and Leboe (2005) who successfully
demonstrated negative priming with such artificially gener-
ated sounds. The sounds differed considerably from each
other with respect to spectral composition and were easily
discriminable. Each sound was 250 ms long. Participants
heard the sounds over earphones that were plugged into
an Apple iMac.
Each experimental trial consisted of a prime and a probe
presentation. For both presentations, a click indicated the ear
at which the to-be-attended sound would be presented.
A simultaneously presented distractor appeared at the other
ear. The attended ear in the prime presentation was ran-
domly assigned; the attended probe sound was presented
to the opposite ear. All participants completed a block of tri-
als with a manual and one with a vocal response require-
ment. The sequence of blocks was varied between
participants. In the manual response block, participants
pressed the response key assigned to the attended sound.
Sound-key associations were randomly assigned for each
 2011 Hogrefe Publishing
 S. Mayr et al.: Evidence of Vocal and Manual Event Files 355

participant. The response keys were sagittally aligned on a
response box. Participants pressed the four keys with the
index and middle fingers of both hands. Hand assignment
– whether the two proximal/distal keys were operated with
the left/right hand – alternated between participants. In the
vocal response block, participants named the attended
sound. The sounds were artificial meaningless sounds.
Names for the sounds were randomly assigned for each par-
ticipant. The names comprised four German nouns with
easy detectable initial phonemes: Buchse (socket), Diener
(butler), Tenor (tenor), and Palme (palm). We chose mean-
ingless sounds and randomly associated them with familiar
nouns in order to keep the learning requirements of the man-
ual and vocal blocks parallel: Sound-vocal response associ-
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end, in the vocal block, the experimenter immediately coded
the response, using a second monitor outside the partici-
pant’s range of vision behind a movable wall. Participants
entered the experiment proper when their responses were
correct in at least 70% of the preceding 20 training trials.
Participants who did not qualify for the experiment within
50 trials were given the choice to quit or to start anew.
In the manual response block, each experimental trial
began with the presentation of the 20-ms click that indicated
the target ear. After a 500-ms click-target interval, the prime
sounds were presented. Three thousand milliseconds after
prime onset, the probe click was presented, followed by a
500-ms click-target interval after which the probe sounds
followed. In prime and probe, participants had to respond

ations had to be learned in the same way as sound-manual within 2,000 ms after sound onset. Responses faster than
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response associations.
Ignored repetition trials were constructed as in previous
experiments (Mayr & Buchner, 2006) by randomly selecting
three of the four stimuli as prime and probe sounds with the
restriction that the ignored prime had to be identical to the
attended probe. Parallel control trials were constructed by
replacing the ignored prime with the remaining stimulus.
Within these two types of trials the ignored prime would
have been the attended probe stimulus on 50% of the trials,
and the prime target would never have been equal to the
probe target. Therefore, attended repetition trials were con-
structed by randomly selecting three of the four stimuli as
prime and probe sounds with the restriction that the attended
prime had to be identical to the attended probe.3 Attended
repetition control trials were constructed by replacing the at-
tended prime with the remaining stimulus. There were 48
unique trials, including 12 trials of each of the four trial
types. Each trial was presented four times, twice in each re-
sponse modality resulting in 192 experimental trials overall.
Within the vocal and the manual response block, all trials
were presented in a random sequence.
Procedure
Participants adjusted the loudness of the sounds to a com-
fortable level (about 65 dB(A) on average). In each response
block, a training phase comprised trials with a target sound
presented to one ear, a distractor sound presented to the
other ear, and a preceding click that indicated the target
ear. Participants reacted to the target by pressing the associ-
ated response key or by naming the sound. Participants were
given audio-visual feedback about the correctness of each
reaction in the training and the experimental trials. To this
100 ms were counted as false alarms. Three thousand milli-
seconds after probe onset, participants were given audio-
visual feedback about the correctness of their responses. A
2,000-ms interval followed before the next prime-probe trial
was presented. For the vocal block, the sequence of events
was the same with the only difference that participants
responded vocally.
After every 12th trial, participants received a summary
feedback with respect to average speed and accuracy. After
the final trial of the first block, instructions and training for
the second response modality block started. After the final
experimental trial, participants were informed about the pur-
pose of the experiment. The experiment took 60 min.
Design
The experimental design comprised a 2 · 2 design with
trial type (ignored repetition vs. control) and response
modality (vocal vs. manual) as within-subject variables.
Data were collapsed over the sequence of blocks between-
subject variable.4 The dependent variable of greatest interest
was the probe error frequency, accumulated across partici-
pants, but we also analyzed participants’ average reaction
times and overall probe error rates.
The a priori power analysis focused on finding a differ-
ence in the probability of prime response retrieval (repre-
sented by the prr parameter of the prime response
retrieval model as described further on) between the ignored
repetition and control condition for each response modality.
The population effect of the difference in the prr parameter
was estimated to be of size x = .065 (Mayr & Buchner,
2006, Experiment 2). Calculations were based upon the esti-
mate that each participant would contribute approximately

3
We refrained from presenting the attended repetition data and from comparing them with the ignored repetition data for two reasons: First,
attended repetition trials were not hypothesis-relevant but were solely included as filler trials to prevent the development of any prime-to-
probe response strategies (e.g., ‘‘never repeat a prime response’’). Second, attended repetition trials differed from ignored repetition trials
not only with respect to the attentional focus at the repeated location (attended-attended vs. ignored-attended) but also with respect to the
presence of identity-location mismatches (which is a possible determinant of the negative priming effect, see Park & Kanwisher, 1994). The
to-be-attended ear always changed between prime and probe which implies that the repeated stimulus in ignored repetition trials was
presented to the same ear whereas the repeated stimulus in attended repetition trials was presented to different ears. As a consequence,
prime-to-probe identity-location mismatches were absent in ignored repetition trials but present in attended repetition trials. This confound
would have turned any comparison between these trial types ambiguous.
4
A supplementary analysis neither revealed a main effect nor any interaction with the sequence of blocks variable.

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 356 S. Mayr et al.: Evidence of Vocal and Manual Event Files

40 utilizable probe responses in the manual as well as the 1,200 1,200

vocal response modality. Assuming desired levels of Ignored repetition
a = b = .05, data had to be collected from a sample of 1,150 Control 1,150
N = 77 participants (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner,
2007). We were able to collect data from N = 61 partici- 1,100 1,100
pants. With the overall N of 2,654 manual and 2,668 vocal

Reaction Time (ms)

responses, the power was somewhat smaller than what we 1,050 1,050
had planned for (1 b = .92).
1,000 1,000

950 950
Results
900 900
First, the negative priming effect was assessed, then the
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prime response retrieval error was analyzed. Probe reaction

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850 850
times were evaluated for trials with correct prime and probe
responses. Probe errors were evaluated only if they followed
a correct prime response. Vocal response latencies were 800 800
manual vocal
determined offline by the SayWhen-software package Response modality
(Jansen & Watter, 2008). The software detects vocal activity
that passes a specified threshold value in digital recordings 0.2 0.2
and employs additional steps to validate correct onset detec- Ignored repetition
Control
tion. If detected above-threshold activity cannot be verified
as the beginning of an actual response, the trial is flagged
as problematic. Additionally, we flagged all trials with 0.15 0.15
detected response latencies exceeding the range of two stan-
dard deviations above or below the mean of the respective
Error Rates

trial type as problematic. Voice onset in flagged trials was

based on visual inspection of the recorded speech
waveform.
There was a negative priming effect in response times as
responses to ignored repetition trials were slowed down
compared to control trials (Figure 1). Furthermore, responses
to manual trials were faster than responses to vocal trials.
In the 2 · 2 MANOVA of the reaction time data with
trial type (ignored repetition vs. control) and response
modality (manual vs. vocal) as within-subject variables the
main effects of trial type and of response modality were sta-
tistically significant, F(1, 60) = 57.05, p < .01, g2 = .49
and F(1, 60) = 91.71, p < .01, g2 = .61, respectively. The
interaction between both variables was not significant,
F(1, 60) = 1.15, p = .29, g2 = .02. There was a significant
negative priming effect for manual, t(60) = 4.96, p < .01,
dz = 0.64, and for vocal responses, t(60) = 7.18, p < .01,
dz = 0.92.
An analysis of the error data (Figure 1) revealed only a
significant negative priming effect, F(1, 60) = 11.89,
p < .01, g2 = .17. Neither the main effect of response
modality nor the interaction between both variables was sig-
nificant, F(1, 60) = 0.08, p = .78, g2 < .01 and F(1, 60) =
0.38, p = .54, g2 = .01, respectively. Negative priming
was significant for manual, t(60) = 2.11, p = .04, dz = 0.27,
as well as for vocal responses, t(60) = 2.99, p < .01,
dz = 0.38.
In order to test whether prime response retrieval occurred
in the manual as well as the vocal response modality, we
analyzed the error frequencies displayed in Table 1 using
the multinomial prime response retrieval model introduced
by Mayr and Buchner (2006; see Figure 2). The model
represents the processing stages presumably involved in
0.1 0.1
0.05 0.05
0 0
manual vocal
Response modality
Figure 1. Sample average of participants’ mean reaction
times (upper panel) and error rates (lower panel) as a
function of response modality (manual vs. vocal) and trial
type (ignored repetition vs. control). The error bars depict
the standard errors of the means.
generating a probe response. Participants correctly identify
and respond to the probe target with probability ci. Errors
(1 ci) may have different causes. Participants might expe-
rience a probe stimulus confusion in that they confuse target
and distractor and respond with the probe distractor with
probability psc. If probe stimulus confusion does not domi-
nate responding (1 psc), then, with probability prr, prime
response retrieval may occur and lead to incorrect prime
responses. Central to our concerns is the size of this prr
parameter in the ignored repetition (prrIR) compared to the
control condition (prrC). If prime response retrieval occurs,
then the probability of retrieving a prime response in the

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 S. Mayr et al.: Evidence of Vocal and Manual Event Files 357

Table 1. Accumulated absolute frequencies of correct probe responses and of the different types of probe errors as a
function of response modality (manual vs. vocal) and trial type (ignored repetition vs. control)
Manual responses Vocal responses
Ignored repetition Control Ignored repetition Control
Correct probe target responses 1,213 1,281 1,264 1,303
Incorrect probe distractor responses 44 48 33 32
Incorrect prime target responses 39 4 26 3
Other incorrect responsesa 12 13 3 4
Note. aIgnored repetition trials: Incorrect responses using the key that was assigned to the non-presented stimulus.
Control trials: Incorrect prime distractor responses.
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ignored repetition condition, prrIR, is expected to be larger
than prrC, the same probability in the control condition.
Thus, if prrIR > prrC and if, in addition, the goodness-
of-fit test of the restricted model assuming prrIR = prrC
leads to a significant misfit, then this is evidence in favor
of the assumption that prime response retrieval occurs and
contributes to the negative priming effect.
The unrestricted multinomial model displayed in Figure 2
fitted the frequency data in both response modalities per-
fectly. The prime response retrieval parameters prrIR and
prrC are illustrated in Figure 3. We tested the goodness-of-
fit of the model with the restriction that prrIR = prrC. The
restricted model neither fit the data in the manual,
G2(1) = 15.25, p < .01, x = . 076, nor the vocal response
modality, G2(1) = 6.62, p = .01, x = .050. In other words,
the restricted model assuming that prrIR equals prrC had
to be rejected for both modalities.
Discussion
The experiment revealed a negative priming effect in reac-
tion times and overall errors for the manual as well as the
vocal response modality. Whereas auditory negative priming
has been demonstrated repeatedly with manual responses,
there has been only one report of auditory negative priming
with vocal responses (Banks et al., 1995). Our data nicely
replicate their finding. Our data further show that the size
of the negative priming effect is independent of whether

Correct Probe
Target
ciIR Response
1 1
prr
Ignored Incorrect Probe Ignored repetition
Repetition Distractor prr
Control
pscIR Response
1 - ciIR 0.8 0.8
Incorrect Prime
prrIR Target
Probability Estimate

1 - pscIR Response

1 - prrIR Other Incorrect 0.6 0.6

Response

Correct Probe 0.4 0.4

Target
ciC Response

Incorrect Probe
Control
Distractor 0.2 0.2
pscC Response
1 - ciC
Incorrect Prime
prrC Target
1 - pscC Response 0 0
manual vocal
1 - prrC Other Incorrect Response modality
Response

Figure 3. Probability estimates for the model parameters

Figure 2. Multinomial processing tree model (‘‘prime representing the probability of prime response retrieval as
response retrieval model’’) for analyzing the probe a function of response modality (manual vs. vocal) and
reactions in the trial type condition ‘‘ignored repetition’’ trial type (ignored repetition vs. control). The error bars
(above) and ‘‘control’’ (below). For details see text. depict the standard errors of the probability estimates.

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 358 S. Mayr et al.: Evidence of Vocal and Manual Event Files

participants respond vocally or manually. To our knowledge,
this is the first systematic comparison of auditory negative
priming between response modalities (Tipper, MacQueen,
& Brehaut, 1988, for a similar finding in the visual
modality).
More important, however, was whether there would be
evidence of prime response retrieval when participants
responded vocally. This was indeed the case. For both the
manual and the vocal response modalities, prime response
errors were more likely for ignored repetition compared to
control trials. In other words, for both response modalities
there was evidence of probe-triggered retrieval of prime epi-
sodes that includes prime response information.5 This find-
ing indicates that prime response retrieval processes are not
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in the auditory modality seem to come from the same distri-
bution, whereas effect sizes in the visual modality seem to
come from a different distribution with a lower mean.
In other words, stimulus modality seems to have a large ef-
fect on the retrieval mechanism, whereas response modality
does not seem to have an effect.
Given the essential differences between manual and
vocal responding, the fact that the prime response retrieval
effects were present (and of similar size) in both response
modalities sheds additional light on the underlying mecha-
nism. First, manual responding per se is of spatial nature
in that manual responses are spatially defined (e.g., a spe-
cific finger of the left or right hand). Furthermore, the audi-
tory stimulation here as well as in similar experiments was

specific to the peculiarities of simple (manual) responses. of spatial nature, too, in that the target sounds were pre-
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Taken together with the fact that the prime response retrieval
effect was found with artificial sound material (Mondor
et al., 2005) instead of environmental sounds that were com-
monly used in our previous experiments, this suggests that
prime response retrieval is a general phenomenon. A prob-
lem when comparing the size of the prime response retrieval
effect with manual as opposed to vocal responses is that a
direct statistical comparison between the sample effect size
measures representing these effects is not possible. How-
ever, we may assess the sample effect sizes observed here
relative to the distribution of all sample effect sizes obtained
so far with our prime response retrieval model in several
auditory negative priming experiments, all of which required
manual responding (Mayr & Buchner, 2006, 2010; Mayr
et al., 2009). These previous sample effect sizes all were
within the interval (.045 < x < .075) with a mean of
x = .060. This shows that the sample effect sizes of the
prime response retrieval effect in the present experiments
(x = .076 and .050 for the manual and vocal response
modalities, respectively) are well within the distribution of
the effect sizes that are typical of prime response retrieval
effects in the auditory modality. What is more, they are gen-
erally much larger than the prime response retrieval effect in
the visual modality, which was found to be as small as
x = .018 (Mayr & Buchner, 2006, Experiment 3). We thus
conclude that the effect sizes of manual and vocal responses
sented at the left or right ear. Therefore, in addition to the
critical trial type manipulation a standard auditory negative
priming experiment also includes hidden spatial stimulus-
response compatibility manipulations (in the sense of Simon
& Rudell, 1967). For example, prime and probe presenta-
tions can be stimulus-response compatible in that the loca-
tion of the target sound coincides with the response hand
(left-left or right-right). They might also be stimulus-
response incompatible in that the location of the target sound
is opposite to the response hand (left-right or right-left).
In addition to the stimulus-response compatibility variations,
manual responding in experiments like the one reported here
is complicated by hand shifts and repetitions depending on
whether or not the response hand changes between prime
and probe. What is more, stimulus-response compatibility
as well as prime-to-probe hand shifts or repetitions might
also have a qualitative influence on prime response retrieval
effects (for a comparable argumentation in visual negative
priming, see Gibbons, 2009; Gibbons & Stahl, 2008).
Conceivably, prime response retrieval might take place pri-
marily, if not exclusively, in compatible probe trials without
a prime-to-probe hand shift. Due to the stimulus-response
compatibility these probe trials would lead to automatic acti-
vation of the correct probe response hand that had also been
the correct prime response hand. In ignored repetition trials,
the retrieved prime response activation (of the same hand,

5
An alternative explanation for the increase of prime response errors in ignored repetition trials is also conceivable: The retrieved prime
distractor might trigger a state of response uncertainty, most probably due to probe-incompatible nonresponse information attached to it (in
terms of Neill’s, 1992 model). Possibly, this state of response uncertainty allows that hypothesized residual response activation from the
prime response breaks through and dominates probe responding. We thank Henning Gibbons for suggesting this alternative explanation. In
contrast to the prime response retrieval model, this explanation does not necessarily (but might) comprise the assumption of retrieved event
files (including prime response information). There is empirical evidence that does not support an explanation along the lines of assuming
residual response activation: We could show (Mayr & Buchner, 2010, Experiment 1) that neither the negative priming effect nor the prime
response retrieval effect was increased although participants had every reason to be biased to repeat responses from prime to probe. In this
experiment, there was one group that was exposed to 50% attended repetition trials beside ignored repetition and control trials, another
group was exposed to only 25% attended repetition trials, a third group was confronted with ignored repetition and control trials only (0%
attended repetition trials). The more frequently participants had to repeat responses, the more likely they should have developed a tendency
to repeat prime responses in the probe. In other words, in the 50% group as opposed to the 0% group, participants should have developed a
very liberal criterion to repeat responses because they benefitted very frequently from repeating a prime response. Therefore, if there were
such a thing as response uncertainty caused by the distractor-to-target repetition in ignored repetition trials, participants in the 50% group
should have been particularly susceptible to simply let go if there was a remaining prime response activation, as a consequence of which the
prime response retrieval effect should have been particularly large in this group. However, compared to the other groups, the 50% group did
not show an increase in the prime response retrieval effect (nor did they show an increase in the negative priming effect). Consequently, an
event-file interpretation is to be preferred to a ‘‘residual-activation-and-repetition-under-uncertainty’’ concept. Alternatively, it is also
possible that erroneous responses with the former prime response are sometimes caused by retrieval of event files including response
information and sometimes caused by residual prime response activation breaking through in a moment of response uncertainty.

Experimental Psychology 2011; Vol. 58(5):353–360  2011 Hogrefe Publishing

 S. Mayr et al.: Evidence of Vocal and Manual Event Files
albeit of a different response finger) might boost the already
increased hand activation above a critical level necessary for
response execution. A prime response error would occur.
Due to the small number of errors participants usually com-
mit in our tasks we had to abstain from systematically ana-
lyzing prime response retrieval effects with respect to
stimulus-response compatibility and hand shift variations
in previous studies. However, the current experiment re-
vealed a prime response retrieval effect with vocal responses
which are unequivocally of nonspatial nature. We can there-
fore be sure that the response retrieval processes do not crit-
ically depend on spatial stimulus-response compatibility or
prime-to-probe hand shifts.
There is another essential difference between manual and
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
vocal responses. Manual choice tasks require the activation
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
and execution of a certain hand/finger response while at the
same time inhibition of the response hand/finger alterna-
tive(s) is possible, if not inevitable. EEG studies have shown
that the activation of a manual response indexed by a nega-
tivity over the contralateral motor cortex prior to the contrac-
tion of the response agonist is accompanied by inhibition
over the ipsilateral motor cortex (Meynier, Burle, Possamai,
Vidal, & Hasbroucq, 2009; Vidal, Grapperon, Bonnet, &
Hasbroucq, 2003). Based on these findings, manual re-
sponse preparation and execution seems to go along with
a combination of activation (of the correct response) and
inhibition (of the incorrect response) processes. An increase
in prime response errors taking place in ignored repetition
trials might therefore be ambiguous. First, prime response
errors could be the consequence of retrieved prime response
activation. This comes closest to our original understanding
of this mechanism. Alternatively, prime response errors
could also be caused indirectly by retrieval of the inhibited
motor reaction to the prime distractor that, in turn, makes the
execution of all alternative responses (including the prime
target response) more likely. Third, retrieval of activation
and inhibition could take place simultaneously.
In contrast to response execution of one finger that can
take place in parallel with motor suppression of the other
fingers, there is only one vocal tract that can either produce
a verbal utterance or remain silent. Consequently, when a
vocal response is executed, simultaneous motor suppression
of alternative vocal responses (e.g., the vocalization of the
prime distractor name) seems to be impossible. This is a
favorable property of the vocal response modality with
respect to our concerns: The fact that in a vocalization task
participants more frequently respond with the former prime
response to the probes in ignored repetition trials implies
that they must have retrieved prime response activation.
In a nutshell, with manual responding, a prime response
retrieval effect could still be mediated by retrieved inhibition
of the prime distractor motor response, but with vocal
responding the effect must be due to retrieval of prime
response activation.
The conclusions that can be drawn from the reported
experiment are not restricted to the negative priming phe-
nomenon. Instead, the findings deliver some broader
insights into the existence and significance of feature and
response binding into event files in auditory perception
and working memory. Retrieval of prime episodes including
 2011 Hogrefe Publishing
359
target, distractor, context, and responses as evidenced here is
conceptually equivalent to the idea of event files (Hommel,
1998). Zmigrod and Hommel (2009, 2010) demonstrated
that auditory features are integrated into auditory event files
and that these event files are retrieved from memory and
influence subsequent performance. Our data show that the
integration and retrieval of event files takes place in auditory
negative priming, and, what is more, that event file coding is
not limited to manual responses but also takes place with vo-
cal responding. In other words, event files have a much
broader significance than what we have assumed before.
Acknowledgments
The research reported in this article was supported by a grant
from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Ma 2610/2-2).
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Received June 30, 2010
Revision received October 22, 2010
Accepted October 24, 2010
Published online February 11, 2011
Dr. Susanne Mayr
Department of Experimental Psychology
Institut für Experimentelle Psychologie
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
40204 Düsseldorf
Germany
Tel. +49 211 811-2270
E-mail susanne.mayr@hhu.de
 2011 Hogrefe Publishing