  Dissociation paradigms examine dissociations between indirect measures of
prime processing and direct measures of prime awareness. It is debated whether
direct measures should be objective or subjective, and whether these measures
should be obtained on the same or separate trials. In two metacontrast
experiments, we measured prime discrimination, PAS ratings, and response
priming either separately or in multiple tasks. Single tasks show the fastest
responses in priming and therefore most likely meet the assumption of
feedforward processing as assumed under Rapid-Chase Theory. Similarly, dual
tasks allow for a fast response activation by the prime; nevertheless,
prolonged responses and slower errors occur more often. In contrast, triple
tasks have a negative effect on response activation: responses are massively
slowed and fast prime-locked errors are lost. Moreover, decreasing priming
effects and prime identification performance result in a loss of a double
dissociation. Here, a necessary condition for unconscious response priming,
feedforward processing, is violated.
