Über die Verwertung unbemerkter Eindrücke bei Assoziationen

Incidental stimulation: A study of preconscious transformations.

“…In contrast, the present study deals with the "inaccuracies" in the effects of marginal stimuli (subliminal or incidental)-effects traceable to a stimulus but nonetheless quite altered from the initial stimulus. It is also closely related to studies of the effects of subliminal stimulation which indicate that unreported stimuli emerge in cognitive productions subsequent to the stimulation (Allers & Teler, 1924;Bach & Klein, 1957;Fisher & Paul, 1959;Klein, Spence, Holt, & Gourevitch, 1958;Paul & Fisher, 1958;Poetzl, 1917;Shevrin & Luborsky, 1958;Smith, Spence & Klein, 1959). An additional observation in these studies has been that what eventually emerges in subsequent dreams or images is related to but certainly not always identical with the initial stimulus.…”

What becomes of the input from the stimulus?1

“…Fantasy productions. Fantasy productions are of vanous kmds, such as stones to TAT cards (Pme, 1960), or drawmgs of pnmed or unpnmed images Pruned images are those that are suggested when the subject has done somethmg else, such as respondmg m a word-association test, or been given some kmd of kmt, perhaps through a word list, unpnmed unages result when he IS free to fantasy anythmg and to try to draw what appears The drawmgs of fantasied pictures under these two circumstances have been widely used to detect activation by unnoticed features of a stimulus, eg, Allers and Teler (1924), Fisher (1956), Hilgard (1958, Paul (1959), andPaul andFisher (1959) Most mvestigators report positive results, but the results have to be mterpreted with some caution A useful review, sensitive to the issues mvolved, is that of Fisher (1960b) 4 Dreams Dreams are special kmds of fantasy productions The early expenments of Poetzl (1917) showed recovery of unnoticed features of visually presented stimuh in dreams, and his lead has been followed by others, notably Malamud and Lmder (1931), Fisher (1954, 1956, 1960a, and Shevnn and Luborsky (1958) The results are, in general, similar to those found in waking fantasy. Careful exammation by Johnson & Enksen (1961) of the results of Shevnn and Luborsky casts some doubt upon the statistical significance of their findmgs, because theirs IS the only senes m repetition of Poetzl that has thus far attempted statistical control, it leaves the whole matter a httle uncertam from a quantitative scientific standpomt.…”

“…We designed an expenment of the Allers and Teler (1924) type m which, after a bnef exposure of visual stimuh (colored shdes of two scenes, one an Indian family m the southwest, another a jungle scene), subjects were asked to draw pictures aroused by a succession of association words A number of controls were built m to improve upon the ongmal expenments and upon the repetition by Luborsky and Shevnn (1956) and Shevrm and Luborsky (1958) Among the features mciuded m the design were (a) the use of two pictures followed by the same set of stimulus words to ehcit word associations, m order to detect to what extent the fantasies were functions of the words, to what extent functions of the pictures (the smgle subject did not of course have the same set of words for both pictures, but two sets of words were counterbalanced), (b) the use of both pictures m direct and m mirror-image presentations (obverse and reverse, m the tennmology of medals and coins) so that recall of perceived parts could be identified by orientation as weU as by substance, (c) m every case onginal and final drawings * Some of the findings have been presented m preliminary form in Hilgard (1958), but the full report of the expenments has not been published pending opportunity to gather some additional data and to complete some additional controls of what the subject perceived the stimulus picture to be, (d) recogmtion tests in which the perceived picture had to be selected from vanants m which details were altered, (e) enough subjects (a total of 64) so that somethmg could be asserted about the frequency of whatever effects were found There was no effort to make the pictures sublimmal, in the sense that nothmg could be detected or recognized, the illumination and exposure-time (01 sec ) permitted the subject to see something, occasionally a great deal, but plenty of details were missing to give room for "recovery" of unnoticed matenal…”

The measurement of preconscious perception in dreams and images: An investigation of the Poetzl phenomenon.

“…In this sense, a positive correlation was "built into" our measure. If the 5 1 were compared with himself under the conditions of intentional and unintentional recall, the amount consciously reported would be eliminated as a source of individual variation.…”

“…The Poetzl procedure has been repeated in several studies (1,4,5,6,13,14) but thus far no measure of preconscious perception has been developed. Our primary aim in the present report is to construct a reliable measure of preconscious perception as elicited by the Poetzl technique and then to examine evidence bearing on its validity.…”