The article addresses the issue of perception and processing of ambiguous information. Experimental effects of understanding of polysemantic stimuli (homonyms, reversed figures) on conscious and unconscious levels have been analyzed. It is shown that implicit awareness of several meanings occurs before the explication of one meaning of stimulus take place. The aim of the current research is to discover the effect of asymmetry of semantic activation in unconscious perception of ambiguous information (in homonyms). The  procedures  and  results  of  the  two  conducted  studies  are  fully  described. In Experiment 1, technique of priming was used, in which ambiguous words were used as prime stimuli. Participants were randomly divided into four groups (two experimental and two control groups). Unconscious primes with visual mask were demonstrated to participants of experimental groups. Then, two words were demonstrated, only one of which had semantic relation to one meaning of the prime stimulus. The sets of stimuli in the experimental groups differed only in the words that were semantically related to the meaning of the ambiguous prime. The words that were not semantically related to the prime stimuli were identical. Then all partici pants (including participants in control groups) were told to choose as quickly as they could one word of two, using keys “left” or “right”. The results supported the hypothesis about the asymmetry of semantic activation in general. Participants did choose words related to particular meaning of prime stimuli more often.In Experiment 2, participants were asked to write down associations with the same words that were used as primes in Experiment 1. The results have shown that stronger association between prime and ambiguous stimuli facilitates priming-effect, while weaker association makes priming-effect insignificant.The present research supports the proposition that all alternative meanings of ambiguous words are more or less actualized implicitly, which influences further cognitive activity. The described phenomenon was labeled as the effect of semantic activation asymmetry. On the unconscious level, this asymmetry shows up as quantitative difference between priming-effects. On the conscious level, this asymmetry shows up as easiness  and  accessibility  of  verbal associations  on  corresponding  meaning of the ambiguous word.

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The article is addressed on research aimed to discover effect of transfer of implicit knowledge of artificial grammar on sensorimotor tasks solving. Meaning of implicit knowledge in actual cognitive activity has been considered. 40 volunteers took part in experiment, ages 18 to 43 years. Participants of experiment implicit learned the rule of artificial grammar. The task of control phase was to solve the sensorimotor task — to react by pressing of certain key under appearance of green or yellow circle. In experimental group, always before presentation of green circle a grammatical sequence appeared, before presentation of yellow circle — ungrammatical. In control group, color of circle was not dependent on grammatically of sequence. The results have shown that significant reduction of reaction time was discovered in experimental group. Thus, transfer of implicitly learned knowledge of artificial grammar leads to increase of effectiveness of sensorimotor activity. Implicit knowledge acquired meaning prim-stimulation.

The article is devoted to the study of implicit learning of perceptual and categorical sequences. The purpose of the conducted research was to reveal the effect of unconscious acquisition of several regularities that belong to the different organization types. In the course of the experiment, the subjects were presented with words belonging to one of the categories (animate and inanimate) and colored in one of four colors (red, yellow, blue or green). The sequence of categories was organized according to a certain rule, or changed randomly. The colours were always alternating in certain order. At the training stage, it was necessary to react to the color of the word. At the test stage, participants were required to press the key corresponding to the word category. There was a significant dynamics in reducing the reaction time to color from the beginning to the end of the training stage. The results of the study showed that the presence or absence of the sequence of categories in the training process does not affect the performance of the test task.

Статья посвящена исследованию эффекта контрастной иллюзии. Данный экспериментальный факт был обнаружен Д. Н. Узнадзе, однако по сей день не получил удовлетворительного объяснения. Рассмотрены классические опыты, поставленные Д. Н. Узнадзе, в которых установка формировалась в условиях, предусматривающих контроль сознания. Описаны процедура и результаты эксперимента, проверяющего возможность проявления иллюзии контраста в условиях формирования фиксированной установки на иррелевантный признак (за пределами фокусированного внимания). Испытуемый воспринимал геометрические фигуры на экране, разделенном на два окна. В левом окне всегда было изображено меньше точек, чем в правом. Разница составляла 20 %. Целевая задача испытуемого состояла в определении того, какая из фигур, в левом или в правом окне экрана, расположена выше. В контрольном предъявлении испытуемый сравнивал одинаковое количество точек. Было установлено, что в большинстве случаев (84 %) испытуемые совершали ошибки. Среди общего количества иллюзий доминировали иллюзии по контрасту (в 58 % случаев). Предлагаемое объяснение эффекта контрастной иллюзии предполагает постулирование двух стадий неосознаваемого процесса, предваряющего иллюзорный эффект, а именно стадии параллельного сличения и стадии сравнения результатов сличения. Библиогр. 12 назв. Ил. 3. Табл. 2. Ключевые слова: фиксированная установка, контрастная иллюзия, ассимилятивная иллюзия, сознательный контроль, сличение.