Influence of spatial attention on conscious and unconscious word priming

Ortells, Juan J.; Frings, Christian; Plaza-Ayllon, Vanesa

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2011.10.012

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…A series of previous studies have reported consistent evidence for unconscious word processing with backward masking only (Merikle and Joordens, 1997; Daza et al, 2002; Ortells et al, 2003, 2012a). Unconscious semantic activation is demonstrated when the masked prime word facilitates processing of the target stimulus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Testing the attentional boundary conditions of subliminal semantic priming: the influence of semantic and phonological task sets

Adams

Kiefer

2012

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Recent studies challenged the classical notion of automaticity and indicated that even unconscious automatic semantic processing is under attentional control to some extent. In line with our attentional sensitization model, these data suggest that a sensitization of semantic pathways by a semantic task set is necessary for subliminal semantic priming to occur while non-semantic task sets attenuate priming. In the present study, we tested whether masked semantic priming is also reduced by phonological task sets using the previously developed induction task paradigm. This would substantiate the notion that attention to semantics is necessary for eliciting unconscious semantic priming. Participants first performed semantic and phonological induction tasks that should either activate a semantic or a phonological task set. Subsequent to the induction task, a masked prime word, either associated or non-associated with the following lexical decision target word, was presented. Across two experiments, we varied the nature of the phonological induction task (word phonology vs. letter phonology) to assess whether the attentional focus on the entire word vs. single letters modulates subsequent masked semantic priming. In both experiments, subliminal semantic priming was only found subsequent to the semantic induction task, but was attenuated following either phonological induction task. These results indicate that attention to phonology attenuates subsequent semantic processing of unconsciously presented primes whether or not attention is directed to the entire word or to single letters. The present findings therefore substantiate earlier evidence that an attentional orientation toward semantics is necessary for subliminal semantic priming to be elicited.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Testing the attentional boundary conditions of subliminal semantic priming: the influence of semantic and phonological task sets

Adams

Kiefer

2012

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Even for conscious trials this might take some time (∼400 ms), suggesting that these strategic effects take some time to build up (Ortells et al, 2003). These conscious strategic effects were recently only observed for spatially attended stimuli, but not for unattended ones (Ortells et al, 2011). At present it is still disputed whether such context effects depend on the conscious awareness of the primes, because several studies have reported an absence of congruency effects when the conflicting stimuli were presented subliminally (Merikle and Joordens, 1997; Daza et al, 2002; van den Bussche et al, 2008; Heinemann et al, 2009).…”

Section: Conscious Awareness and Top-down Cognitive Controlmentioning

confidence: 91%

The role of consciousness in cognitive control and decision making

Gaal¹,

Lange²,

Cohen³

2012

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

136

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Here we review studies on the complexity and strength of unconscious information processing. We focus on empirical evidence that relates awareness of information to cognitive control processes (e.g., response inhibition, conflict resolution, and task-switching), the life-time of information maintenance (e.g., working memory) and the possibility to integrate multiple pieces of information across space and time. Overall, the results that we review paint a picture of local and specific effects of unconscious information on various (high-level) brain regions, including areas in the prefrontal cortex. Although this neural activation does not elicit any conscious experience, it is functional and capable of influencing many perceptual, cognitive (control) and decision-related processes, sometimes even for relatively long periods of time. However, recent evidence also points out interesting dissociations between conscious and unconscious information processing when it comes to the duration, flexibility and the strategic use of that information for complex operations and decision-making. Based on the available evidence, we conclude that the role of task-relevance of subliminal information and meta-cognitive factors in unconscious cognition need more attention in future work.

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“…Such priming has been described as unconscious in nature when subjects are phenomenally unaware of the masked primes and/or they cannot identify them in a separate test of prime visibility. Evidence for reproducible unconscious congruency priming has been accumulated across a variety of categorization tasks, such as positive vs. negative valence judgments (De Houwer, Hermans, Rothermund, & Wentura, 2002;Kiefer, Sim, & Wentura, 2015;Klauer et al, 2007;Naccache et al, 2005), number classification (Dehaene et al, 1998;Naccache & Dehaene, 2001a, 2001b, size discrimination (Kiesel, Kunde, Pohl, & Hoffmann, 2006), gender classification Klauer et al, 2007), and category classification (Forster, Mohan, & Hector, 2003;Ortells, Daza, & Fox, 2003;Ortells, Frings, & Plaza-Ayllón, 2012;Ortells, Vellido, Daza, & Noguera, 2006;Van den Bussche & Reynvoet, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%