Altogether, the results support the conclusion that awareness of visual primes is important for controlling conflict in visuo-motor processing.

No abstract

Face processing without awareness might depend on subcortical structures (retino-collicular projection), cortical structures, or a combination of the two. The present study was designed to tease apart these possibilities. Because the retino-collicular projection is more sensitive to low spatial frequencies, we used masked (subliminal) face prime images that were spatially low-pass filtered, or high-pass filtered. The masked primes were presented in the periphery prior to clearly visible target faces. Participants had to discriminate between male and female target faces and we recorded prime-target congruence effectsthat is, the difference in discrimination speed between congruent pairs (with prime and target of the same sex) and incongruent pairs (with prime and target of different sexes). In two experiments, we consistently find that masked low-pass filtered face primes produce a congruence effect and that masked high-pass filtered face primes do not. Together our results support the assumption that the retino-collicular route which carries the low spatial frequencies also conveys sex specific features of face images contributing to subliminal face processing.

In the current study, we tested whether a fear advantage-rapid attraction of attention to fearful faces that is more stimulus-driven than to neutral faces-is emotion specific. We used a cueing task with face cues preceding targets. Cues were non-predictive of the target locations. In two experiments, we found enhanced cueing of saccades towards the targets with fearful face cues than with neutral face cues: Saccades towards targets were more efficient with cues and targets at the same position (under valid conditions) than at opposite positions (under invalid conditions), and this cueing effect was stronger with fearful than with neutral face cues. In addition, this cueing effect difference between fearful and neutral faces was absent with inverted faces as cues, indicating that the fear advantage is face-specific. We also show that emotion categorization of the face cues mirrored these effects: Participants were better at categorizing face cues as fearful or neutral with upright than with inverted faces (Experiment 1). Finally, in alternative blocks including disgusted faces instead of fearful faces, we found more similar cueing effects with disgusted faces and neutral faces, and with upright and inverted faces (Experiment 2). Jointly, these results demonstrate that the fear advantage is emotion-specific. Results are discussed in light of evolutionary explanations of the fear advantage.

To date it is unclear whether (1) awareness-independent non-evaluative semantic processes influence affective semantics and whether (2) awareness-independent affective semantics influence non-evaluative semantic processing. In the current study, we investigated these questions with the help of subliminal (masked) primes and visible targets in a space-valence across-category congruence effect. In line with (1), we found that subliminal space prime words influenced valence classification of supraliminal target words (Experiment 1): classifications were faster with a congruent prime (e.g., the prime “up” before the target “happy”) than with an incongruent prime (e.g., the prime “up” before the target “sad”). In contrast to (2), no influence of subliminal valence primes on the classification of supraliminal space targets into up- and down-words was found (Experiment 2). Control conditions showed that standard masked response priming effects were found with both subliminal prime types, and that an across-category congruence effect was also found with supraliminal valence primes and spatial target words. The final Experiment 3 confirmed that the across-category congruence effect indeed reflected priming of target categorization of a relevant meaning category. Together, the data jointly confirmed prediction (1) that awareness-independent non-evaluative semantic priming influences valence judgments.