Depending on the conditions, masked primes can either speed up the reaction to a related target (positive priming, PP) or slow it down (negative priming, NP). A masked priming paradigm is often difficult to apply because the results obtained depend on a large number of factors, which make them difficult to replicate. One possible reason for this may be that the PP and NP effects overlap each other. Is such overlap possible, given that the conditions required for PP and NP to be detected are different? We examine one of the conditions contributing to the occurrence of NP instead of PP – the task complicated by the presence of a distractor. Does the NP mechanism continue to function when this condition is not met? This question is discussed from the perspective of various accounts of negative priming. Based on the negative choice theory proposed by V.M. Allakhverdov, we hypothesize that NP may occur at the stage when a target enters consciousness: in this case conscious recognition in the absence of distractors also slows down, but when the motor response is given automatically, such a slowdown does not manifest itself in longer RTs. In the current experiment, we tried to detect this slowdown indirectly. The subjects were presented with target words without distractors, preceded by masked primes that matched the targets in the half of the trials. During each trial, the background color was changing; after naming a target word, the subjects indicated on a special scale what the background color was at the moment when the word appeared. While RTs revealed no NP, the effect was observed in the color task: when the prime and the target matched, the subjects chose the later color as an answer.