Unconscious cross-modal priming of auditory sound localization by visual words.

Abstract

Little is known about the cross-modal integration of unconscious and conscious information. In the current study, we therefore tested whether the spatial meaning of an unconscious visual word, such as up, influences the perceived location of a subsequently presented auditory target. Although cross-modal integration of unconscious information is generally rare, unconscious meaning stemming from only 1 particular modality could, in principle, be available for other modalities. Also, on the basis of known influences and dependencies of meaning on sensory information processing, such an unconscious meaning-based effect could impact sensory processing in a different modality. In 3 experiments, this prediction was confirmed. We found that an unconscious spatial word, such as up, facilitated position discrimination of a spatially congruent sound (here, a sound from above) as compared to a spatially incongruent sound (here, from below). This was found even though participants did not recognize the meaning of the primes. The results show that unconscious processing extends to semantic-sensory connections between different modalities. (PsycINFO Database Record