Hi Will! Yes it is essentially a preview effect, but it occurs only if the flankers have the potential to be ungrouped at longer durations (i.e., it seems to be gated by grouping processes).

Having said this, I totally agree priming effects in social psychology are very hard to find (if they exist at all). Maybe in your case the term "priming effects in social psychology" would be more on point to discuss implications for that field?

Thank you for clarifying. The term "priming" in vision science is based on behavioural experiment (different reaction times, accuracy, etc.) and it can manifest on multiple levels of action, perception, decision-making and memory effects. These effects exist and they have been fully characterized.

I have a general question. When you refer to priming, do you refer to social psychology? Or to psychology in general? In vision science, priming/serial dependence/serial effects are still very much alive with convincing evidence (I just published a meta-analysis on it on >100 studies)