Diffusion model-based understanding of subliminal affective priming in continuous flash suppression

Minchul Kim,Bumseok Jeong,Jaejoong Kim,Jeeyeon Kim

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-90917-w

Abstract

Affective states influence our decisions even when processed unconsciously. Continuous flash suppression (CFS) is a new variant of binocular rivalry that can be used to render the prime subliminal. Nonetheless, how prior information from emotional faces suppressed by CFS influences subsequent decision-making remains unclear. Here, we employed a CFS priming task to examine the effect of the two main types of information conveyed by faces, i.e., facial identity and emotion, on the evaluation of target words as positive or negative. The hierarchical diffusion model was used to investigate the underlying mechanisms. A significant interaction effect on response time was observed following the angry face prime but not the happy or neutral face primes. The results of the diffusion model analyses revealed that the priming effects of facial identity were mapped onto the drift rate and erased the ‘positive bias’ (the processing advantage of positive over negative stimuli). Meanwhile, the positive emotional faces increased the nondecision time in response to negative target words. The model-based analysis implies that both facial identity and emotion are processed under CFS.

Highlights

Affective states influence our decisions even when processed unconsciously
Yang et al used an emotional face prime rendered invisible under Continuous flash suppression (CFS) and a visible emotional target word to test whether high-level information rather than low-level properties can be extracted under CFS and found that a congruent meaning of facial expressions facilitated emotional judgments of subsequent words
Our reaction time (RT) analysis results revealed that the interaction between the angry face and scrambled face primes was significant

Summary

Introduction

Affective states influence our decisions even when processed unconsciously. Continuous flash suppression (CFS) is a new variant of binocular rivalry that can be used to render the prime subliminal. Yang et al used an emotional face prime rendered invisible under CFS and a visible emotional target word to test whether high-level information rather than low-level properties can be extracted under CFS and found that a congruent meaning of facial expressions facilitated emotional judgments of subsequent words. They argued that since faces and words have minimal overlapping features, the possibility of perceptual facilitation by low-level features could be ruled o ut[6]. Even when the RTs are similar, a diffusion model analysis can reveal the mechanisms that contribute to the results (Fig. 1B,C)

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Conclusion