Identifying the duration of emotional stimulus presentation for conscious versus subconscious perception via hierarchical drift diffusion models

Abstract

To investigate subliminal priming effects, different durations for stimulus presentation are applied ranging from 8 to 30 ms. This study aims to select an optimal presentation span whichleads to a subconscious processing.40 healthy participants rated emotional faces (sad, neutral or happy expression) presented for 8.3 ms, 16.7 ms and 25 ms. Alongside subjective and objectivestimulus awareness, task performance was estimated via hierarchical drift diffusion models.Participants reported stimulus awareness in 65 % of the 25 ms trials,in 36 % of 16.7 ms trials, and in 2.5 % of 8.3 ms trials.Emotion-dependent responses were reflected in decreased performance (drift rates, accuracy)during sad trials. The detection rate (probability of making a correct response) during 8.3 ms was 12.2 % and slightly above chance level (33.333 % for three response options) during 16.7 ms trials (36.8 %).The experiments suggest a presentation time of 16.7 ms as optimal for subconscious priming. An emotion-specific response was detected during 16.7 ms while the performanceindicates a subconscious processing.