Abstract
Although a few studies have investigated the integration between some types of unconscious stimuli, no research has yet explored the integration between unconscious emotional stimuli. This study was designed to provide behavioral evidence for the integration between unconsciously perceived emotional faces (same or different valence relation) using a modified priming paradigm. In two experiments, participants were asked to decide whether two faces in the target, which followed two subliminally presented faces of same or different emotional expressions, were of the same or different emotional valence. The interstimulus interval (ISI) between the prime and the target was manipulated (0, 53, 163 ms). In Experiment 1, prime visibility was assessed post-experiment. In Experiment 2, it was assessed on each trial. Interestingly, in both experiments, unconsciously processed valence relation of the two faces in the prime generated a negative priming effect in the response to the supraliminally presented target, independent of the length of ISI. Further analyses suggested that the negative priming was probably caused by a motor response incongruent relation between the subliminally perceived prime and the supraliminally perceived target. The visual feature incongruent relation across the prime and target was not found to play a role in the negative priming. Because the negative priming was found at short ISI, an attention mechanism as well as a motor inhibition mechanism were proposed in the generation of the negative priming effect. Overall, this study indicated that the subliminal valence relation was processed, and that integration between different unconsciously perceived stimuli could occur.
Highlights
Many studies have demonstrated that people can process unconscious information [1] and that the unconscious information can affect subsequent processing of conscious information [2,3]
By using a masked prime display paradigm, we investigated whether the emotional valence relation between two unconsciously perceived faces were processed by participants
The results showed that the unconsciously perceived valence relation in the prime elicited a negative priming effect independent of the length of interstimulus interval (ISI)
Summary
Many studies have demonstrated that people can process unconscious information [1] and that the unconscious information can affect subsequent processing of conscious information [2,3]. The unconscious processing is not always automatic but can be modulated by top-down processes [4,5,6]. These results suggested that conscious and unconscious processes can influence each other. The area in consciousness research that has not been systematically investigated but has great theoretical importance is the relationship between unconscious processes that can take place between different stimuli [7,8]. Preliminary studies [9,10,11,12] focusing on the relationship between unconscious processes occurring between different stimuli mainly investigated integration between different subliminally perceived stimuli. There is evidence that gestalt-like configurations can be processed in the absence of consciousness [3,14]
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