Subliminally Research Articles

Monitoring of Potentially Dangerous Information-Psychological Affect on Individual and Group Сonsciousness of Multimedia Content Consumers

This article reviews the basic principles of multi-level system of diagnostics and monitoring of potentially dangerous informational and psychological affect on consumers of multimedia content. The results of experimental studies on the detection of hidden subliminal messages are represented.

Serial order learning of subliminal visual stimuli: evidence of multistage learning.

It is widely known that statistical learning of visual symbol sequences occurs implicitly (Kim et al., 2009). In this study, we examined whether people can learn the serial order of visual symbols when they cannot detect them. During the familiarization phase, triplets or quadruplets of novel symbols were presented to one eye under continuous flash suppression (CFS). Perception of the symbols was completely suppressed by the flash patterns presented to the other eye [binocular rivalry (BR)]. During the test phase, the detection latency was faster for symbols located later in the triplets or quadruplets. These results indicate that serial order learning occurs even when the participants cannot detect the stimuli. We also found that detection became slower for the last item of the triplets or quadruplets. This phenomenon occurred only when the participants were familiarized with the symbols under CFS, suggesting that the subsequent symbols interfered with the processing of the target symbol when conscious perception was suppressed. We further examined the nature of the interference and found that it occurred only when the subsequent symbol was not fixed. This result suggests that serial order learning under BR is restricted to fixed order sequences. Statistical learning of the symbols’ transition probability might not occur when the participants cannot detect the symbols. We confirmed this hypothesis by conducting another experiment wherein the transition probability of the symbol sequence was manipulated.

Media exposure and influence of female athlete body images

The job of any form of media is to convey a message. These messages can range from a benign sales ad to deeper subliminal message of acceptable behavior. Historically, media has taught us that men are supposed to compete in physical activities such as sport and any women who choose to do so are type casted as being lesbian or tomboys. To combat this, females often go to great lengths, including portraying themselves as sexual objects, to prove their femininity and thus lose their credibility as athletes. The other issue that can arise from this include other female athletes concentrating more on the physique of their bodies and less on performing their athletic talents.

Automaticity of unconscious response inhibition: comment on Chiu and Aron (2014).

A recent study (Chiu & Aron, 2014) suggested that unconscious response inhibition is maintained when subliminal stimuli are mixed with supraliminal stimuli that are associated with response inhibition (mixed session), but it is abolished when they are presented alone (single session). However, awareness of the subliminal stimuli is likely to differ in the 2 sessions because of priming of awareness--awareness for subliminal stimuli is elevated (e.g., no longer subliminal) when mixed with supraliminal stimuli (Lin & Murray, 2014a). Here, in a novel design, we measured the awareness level in both sessions and found that the session-dependent effect was due to an awareness difference: The effect disappeared when awareness was comparable and emerged only when awareness was different. Arguments based on the lack of correlation between awareness and unconscious effects are refuted because typical correlation analysis underestimates the true correlation because of range restriction and it speaks only about individual differences that cannot explain within-subject effects (e.g., stimulus context here). Our findings also point to an attention-based mechanism underlying priming of awareness: Supraliminal trials are less attention-demanding, allowing for more attentional resources for subliminal trials in the mixed than single sessions. We discuss 2 implications. First, unconscious effects depend on top-down task sets and bottom-up stimulus strength. Second, to properly demonstrate unconscious processing, we stress the importance of having equivalent trial sequences between the main and awareness tests, promote a conjunction method that can strengthen inference, and discuss establishing a limit for equivalence between observed and chance performance.

Category-selective Attention Modulates Unconscious Processing: Evidence from ERP

Aims: Recently, using the fMRI method in a paradigm in which visible word cues were followed by masked faces at a completely unconscious level or masked tools at a partially conscious level, Tu, Qiu, Martens, & Zhang [31] showed that the top-down modulation effects were in opposite directions for the two conditions. Because five different pictures of masked faces/tools were displayed in a trial, the authors proposed that the modulation effects could further interact with the Original Research Article Liu et al.; BJESBS, 7(3): 220-231, 2015; Article no.BJESBS.2015.086 221 conscious component of the partial awareness processing (i.e., awareness of the global contour change). In the present event-related potential study, we employed a paradigm similar to that of Tu et al.’s [31] except that the masked stimulus was displayed only once to test the effect of categoryselective attention on unconscious processing of picture identity and to try to investigate the above hypothesis. Study Design: Two semantic category cues (“face” or “tool”) and two types of subliminal stimuli (face or tool images) were crossed to generate four conditions: a face cue followed by a masked face picture, a face cue followed by a masked tool picture, a tool cue followed by a masked face picture, and a tool cue followed by a masked tool picture. Place and Duration of Study: Department of psychology, Institute of education, China West Normal University, between September 2013 and April 2014. Methodology: The technique of event-related potentials (ERP) was used. Results: Processing of masked face and tool images both elicited the ERP components of C1, P1, N1, and P2. In addition, C1 component between 25 ms and 55 ms was smaller in the valid category cue-word condition (face cue-word followed by masked face image & tool cue-word followed by masked tool image) than in the invalid cue-words (face cue-word followed by masked tool image & tool cue-word followed by masked face image). The other three waves, P1, N1, and P2, were found to be unaffected by the top–down modulation. Conclusion: Category-selective attention can modulate unconscious processes at an early stage of visual processing supporting the interaction hypothesis.

Reactance to Deterrence: How Discouragement Impels Success

Event Abstract Back to Event Reactance to Deterrence: How Discouragement Impels Success Charlotte Prevost1, 2*, Hakwan Lau1 and Dean Mobbs1 1 Columbia University, Psychology, United States 2 University of Geneva, Neuroscience, Switzerland Background: Discouragement is commonly assumed to have a deterrent effect on behavior. However, psychological reactance theory predicts that a threat to a behavioral freedom induces a motivational state aimed at restoring the freedom. Empirical evidence supporting the counterintuitive idea that discouragement might not only motivate people, but might also lead to improved performance has remained lacking and the neural mechanisms underlying these phenomena have yet to be understood. Methods: 25 participants were scanned using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while performing a task where they were encouraged, given no feedback or discouraged by an independent set of judges to take up a challenge on a trial-by-trial basis. Taking up the challenge, which consisted in deciding whether a letter subliminally displayed on the screen was a vowel or a consonant, resulted in earning more money but also involved a risk of getting a mild electric shock at the end of the experiment in case of failure. Results: As expected, discouragement had either a deterrent or a motivating effect depending on the participant. At the neural level, the insula and ventral striatum were found to mediate the motivating effect of discouragement. Moreover, reactant behavior was associated with an increase in performance, whereby the ability to categorize the subliminal stimulus was enhanced following discouragement. This effect was further demonstrated to rely on the coupling between insula and lateral orbitofrontal cortex activities, in accordance with the role of the latter in facilitating successful goal-oriented behavior. Conclusions: These results provide the first behavioral evidence that discouragement can be beneficial in some instances, by increasing both the motivation to perform an action and the success associated with this action. Furthermore, the current findings offer important new insight into the neurobiological foundation of these phenomena. Keywords: Motivation, fMRI, social neuroscience, insula, performance, psychological reactance, Discouragement Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Emotional and Social Processes Citation: Prevost C, Lau H and Mobbs D (2015). Reactance to Deterrence: How Discouragement Impels Success. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00368 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Charlotte Prevost, Columbia University, Psychology, New York, United States, Charlotte.Prevost@unige.ch Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Charlotte Prevost Hakwan Lau Dean Mobbs Google Charlotte Prevost Hakwan Lau Dean Mobbs Google Scholar Charlotte Prevost Hakwan Lau Dean Mobbs PubMed Charlotte Prevost Hakwan Lau Dean Mobbs Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Submillisecond unmasked subliminal visual stimuli evoke electrical brain responses.

Subliminal perception is strongly associated to the processing of meaningful or emotional information and has mostly been studied using visual masking. In this study, we used high density 256-channel EEG coupled with an liquid crystal display (LCD) tachistoscope to characterize the spatio-temporal dynamics of the brain response to visual checkerboard stimuli (Experiment 1) or blank stimuli (Experiment 2) presented without a mask for 1 ms (visible), 500 µs (partially visible), and 250 µs (subliminal) by applying time-wise, assumption-free nonparametric randomization statistics on the strength and on the topography of high-density scalp-recorded electric field. Stimulus visibility was assessed in a third separate behavioral experiment. Results revealed that unmasked checkerboards presented subliminally for 250 µs evoked weak but detectable visual evoked potential (VEP) responses. When the checkerboards were replaced by blank stimuli, there was no evidence for the presence of an evoked response anymore. Furthermore, the checkerboard VEPs were modulated topographically between 243 and 296 ms post-stimulus onset as a function of stimulus duration, indicative of the engagement of distinct configuration of active brain networks. A distributed electrical source analysis localized this modulation within the right superior parietal lobule near the precuneus. These results show the presence of a brain response to submillisecond unmasked subliminal visual stimuli independently of their emotional saliency or meaningfulness and opens an avenue for new investigations of subliminal stimulation without using visual masking.

Subliminal versus supraliminal stimuli activate neural responses in anterior cingulate cortex, fusiform gyrus and insula: a meta-analysis of fMRI studies.

BackgroundNon-conscious neural activation may underlie various psychological functions in health and disorder. However, the neural substrates of non-conscious processing have not been entirely elucidated. Examining the differential effects of arousing stimuli that are consciously, versus unconsciously perceived will improve our knowledge of neural circuitry involved in non-conscious perception. Here we conduct preliminary analyses of neural activation in studies that have used both subliminal and supraliminal presentation of the same stimulus.MethodsWe use Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) to examine functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that uniquely present the same stimuli subliminally and supraliminally to healthy participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We included a total of 193 foci from 9 studies representing subliminal stimulation and 315 foci from 10 studies representing supraliminal stimulation.ResultsThe anterior cingulate cortex is significantly activated during both subliminal and supraliminal stimulus presentation. Subliminal stimuli are linked to significantly increased activation in the right fusiform gyrus and right insula. Supraliminal stimuli show significantly increased activation in the left rostral anterior cingulate.ConclusionsNon-conscious processing of arousing stimuli may involve primary visual areas and may also recruit the insula, a brain area involved in eventual interoceptive awareness. The anterior cingulate is perhaps a key brain region for the integration of conscious and non-conscious processing. These preliminary data provide candidate brain regions for further study in to the neural correlates of conscious experience.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40359-014-0052-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Decreased visual detection during subliminal stimulation.

What is the perceptual fate of invisible stimuli-are they processed at all and does their processing have consequences for the perception of other stimuli? As has been shown previously in the somatosensory system, even stimuli that are too weak to be consciously detected can influence our perception: Subliminal stimulation impairs perception of near-threshold stimuli and causes a functional deactivation in the somatosensory cortex. In a recent study, we showed that subliminal visual stimuli lead to similar responses, indicated by an increase in alpha-band power as measured with electroencephalography (EEG). In the current study, we investigated whether a behavioral inhibitory mechanism also exists within the visual system. We tested the detection of peripheral visual target stimuli under three different conditions: Target stimuli were presented alone or embedded in a concurrent train of subliminal stimuli either at the same location as the target or in the opposite hemifield. Subliminal stimuli were invisible due to their low contrast, not due to a masking procedure. We demonstrate that target detection was impaired by the subliminal stimuli, but only when they were presented at the same location as the target. This finding indicates that subliminal, low-intensity stimuli induce a similar inhibitory effect in the visual system as has been observed in the somatosensory system. In line with previous reports, we propose that the function underlying this effect is the inhibition of spurious noise by the visual system.

Multisensory Integration in Complete Unawareness: Evidence From Audiovisual Congruency Priming

Multisensory integration is thought to require conscious perception. Although previous studies have shown that an invisible stimulus could be integrated with an audible one, none have demonstrated integration of two subliminal stimuli of different modalities. Here, pairs of identical or different audiovisual target letters (the sound /b/ with the written letter “b” or “m,” respectively) were preceded by pairs of masked identical or different audiovisual prime digits (the sound /6/ with the written digit “6” or “8,” respectively). In three experiments, awareness of the audiovisual digit primes was manipulated, such that participants were either unaware of the visual digit, the auditory digit, or both. Priming of the semantic relations between the auditory and visual digits was found in all experiments. Moreover, a further experiment showed that unconscious multisensory integration was not obtained when participants did not undergo prior conscious training of the task. This suggests that following conscious learning, unconscious processing suffices for multisensory integration.

Evidence of weak conscious experiences in the exclusion task.

Exclusion tasks have been proposed as objective measures of unconscious perception as they do not depend upon subjective ratings. In exclusion tasks, participants have to complete a task without using a previously presented prime. Use of the prime is taken as evidence for unconscious processing in the absence of awareness, yet it may also simply indicate that participants have weak experiences but fail to realize that these affect the response or fail to counter the effect on the response. Here, we tested this claim by allowing participants to rate their experience of a masked prime on the perceptual awareness scale (PAS) after the exclusion task. Results showed that the prime was used almost as often when participants reported having seen a “weak glimpse” of the prime as when they claimed to have “no experience” of the prime, thus suggesting participants frequently have weak (possibly contentless) experiences of the stimulus when failing to exclude. This indicates that the criteria for report of awareness is lower (i.e., more liberal) than that for exclusion and that failure to exclude should not be taken as evidence of complete absence of awareness.

Age differences in conscious versus subconscious social perception: the influence of face age and valence on gaze following.

Gaze following is the primary means of establishing joint attention with others and is subject to age-related decline. In addition, young but not older adults experience an own-age bias in gaze following. The current research assessed the effects of subconscious processing on these age-related differences. Participants responded to targets that were either congruent or incongruent with the direction of gaze displayed in supraliminal and subliminal images of young and older faces. These faces displayed either neutral (Study 1) or happy and fearful (Study 2) expressions. In Studies 1 and 2, both age groups demonstrated gaze-directed attention by responding faster to targets that were congruent as opposed to incongruent with gaze-cues. In Study 1, subliminal stimuli did not attenuate the age-related decline in gaze-cuing, but did result in an own-age bias among older participants. In Study 2, gaze-cuing was reduced for older relative to young adults in response to supraliminal stimuli, and this could not be attributed to reduced visual acuity or age group differences in the perceived emotional intensity of the gaze-cue faces. Moreover, there were no age differences in gaze-cuing when responding to subliminal faces that were emotionally arousing. In addition, older adults demonstrated an own-age bias for both conscious and subconscious gaze-cuing when faces expressed happiness but not fear. We discuss growing evidence for age-related preservation of subconscious relative to conscious social perception, as well as an interaction between face age and valence in social perception.

The Impact of Subliminal Messages in Cartoons on Children

Hedef kitlesi çocuklar olan çizgi filmlerin işlevleri; öğretmek, doğruyu göstermek, eğlendirmek, eğlendirirken eğitmektir. Ne yazık ki her çizgi filmde bu işlevleri yerine getirmek için olumlu mesajlar verilmemektedir. Görünen masum mesajların ardında çizgi film yapımcısına ait görüş, inanış veya felsefeye göre şekillenen mesajlar vardır. Bilinçaltına seslendiği için etkisi diğer mesajlardan daha hızlı ve geniş olan subliminal mesajların var olduğu savı –hâlâ tartışılsa da- geniş kitlelerce kabul edilmektedir. Çizgi filmlere ölüm, cinsellik, şiddet, gerçek üstü unsurlar ve millî duyguları yıpratan olumsuz mesajlar bilinçaltı ikna yöntemleri ile gizlenmektedir. Bu çalışmada çizgi filmlerdeki subliminal mesajların çocuklar üzerindeki etkisi incelenmiştir. Bu amaçla çizgi film, bilinçaltı ikna yöntemleri açıklanmış; bazı çizgi filmler gösterge bilimsel çözümlemelerle incelenerek çizgi filmlere yerleştirilen subliminal mesajlara dikkat çekilmiştir. Varlığı yıllardır tartışılan subliminal mesaj bombardımanına karşı ailelerin, eğitimcilerin, medya kuruluşlarının ve devletin üzerine düşen görevler öneri niteliğinde sunulmuştur.Anahtar sözcükler: Çizgi film, Subliminal Mesaj, Gösterge Bilimi, Çocuk.

FORMAÇÃO DO TERAPEUTA OCUPACIONAL NO SÉCULO XXI

.

Subliminal cues bias perception of facial affect in patients with social phobia: evidence for enhanced unconscious threat processing.

Socially anxious individuals have been shown to exhibit altered processing of facial affect, especially expressions signaling threat. Enhanced unaware processing has been suggested an important mechanism which may give rise to anxious conscious cognition and behavior. This study investigated whether individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) are perceptually more vulnerable to the biasing effects of subliminal threat cues compared to healthy controls. In a perceptual judgment task, 23 SAD and 23 matched control participants were asked to rate the affective valence of parametrically manipulated affective expressions ranging from neutral to angry. Each trial was preceded by subliminal presentation of an angry/neutral cue. The SAD group tended to rate target faces as “angry” when the preceding subliminal stimulus was angry vs. neutral, while healthy participants were not biased by the subliminal stimulus presentation. The perceptual bias in SAD was also associated with higher reaction time latencies in the subliminal angry cue condition. The results provide further support for enhanced unconscious threat processing in SAD individuals. The implications for etiology, maintenance, and treatment of SAD are discussed.

The Interpretation of Dreams, and of Jokes

The problem of meaning in dreams is examined along with the question of how such meaning may be legitimately extracted. Quantitative content analysis has shown that a rough continuity exists between dream content and awake experiences and concerns (and that, therefore, dreams are implicit memories). Continuity becomes more pronounced when figurative (latent) contents are taken into account in addition to literal (manifest) contents and when temporal disjunctions between dream experiences and life-events are factored in. Formal homologies exist between dreams and jokes, which provide a simplifying model for dream interpretation. Jokes prove, for example, that latent contents (which arise from interactions of surface manifest contents with context) convey crucial meanings missing in manifest contents. Dreams are release phenomena involving disinhibition and underregulation of content and style, and for this reason are simultaneously revealing and confusing. Dream distortions turn out to be identical to those found in other types of resource-poor cognition (e.g., aphasia, subliminal perception), suggesting that defense (“censorship”) is not necessarily responsible for dream distortion.

Drink coca-cola, eat popcorn, and choose powerade: testing the limits of subliminal persuasion

Research by marketing/advertising scholars has yielded anything but definitive results when testing whether subliminal advertising is capable of persuading consumers. Recent research in social cognition has provided impressive evidence that subliminally priming brand names affects individuals’ attitudes, choices, and behaviors. In the spirit of replication and boundary-condition testing, we conducted three studies to examine whether subliminally priming brand names remains successful under more realistic marketplace conditions. Study 1 pits an underdog brand against a market share leader and demonstrates that subliminal priming significantly influences purchase intentions when consumers are in an active thirst state. Study 2 examines the boundary conditions of this effect on brand choice in a simulated store environment and also obtains a significant priming effect when consumers are in an active thirst state. However, this effect is nullified in study 3 that is structurally parallel to study 2 but which adds a 15-min time delay between the prime and the choice task. The resultant null effect questions the ability of subliminal priming to persuade consumers under more realistic marketplace conditions.

Visual perception from the perspective of a representational, non-reductionistic, level-dependent account of perception and conscious awareness.

This article proposes a new model to interpret seemingly conflicting evidence concerning the correlation of consciousness and neural processes. Based on an analysis of research of blindsight and subliminal perception, the reorganization of elementary functions and consciousness framework suggests that mental representations consist of functions at several different levels of analysis, including truly localized perceptual elementary functions and perceptual algorithmic modules, which are interconnections of the elementary functions. We suggest that conscious content relates to the ‘top level’ of analysis in a ‘situational algorithmic strategy’ that reflects the general state of an individual. We argue that conscious experience is intrinsically related to representations that are available to guide behaviour. From this perspective, we find that blindsight and subliminal perception can be explained partly by too coarse-grained methodology, and partly by top-down enhancing of representations that normally would not be relevant to action.

A model of subjective report and objective discrimination as categorical decisions in a vast representational space.

Subliminal perception studies have shown that one can objectively discriminate a stimulus without subjectively perceiving it. We show how a minimalist framework based on Signal Detection Theory and Bayesian inference can account for this dissociation, by describing subjective and objective tasks with similar decision-theoretic mechanisms. Each of these tasks relies on distinct response classes, and therefore distinct priors and decision boundaries. As a result, they may reach different conclusions. By formalizing, within the same framework, forced-choice discrimination responses, subjective visibility reports and confidence ratings, we show that this decision model suffices to account for several classical characteristics of conscious and unconscious perception. Furthermore, the model provides a set of original predictions on the nonlinear profiles of discrimination performance obtained at various levels of visibility. We successfully test one such prediction in a novel experiment: when varying continuously the degree of perceptual ambiguity between two visual symbols presented at perceptual threshold, identification performance varies quasi-linearly when the stimulus is unseen and in an 'all-or-none' manner when it is seen. The present model highlights how conscious and non-conscious decisions may correspond to distinct categorizations of the same stimulus encoded by a high-dimensional neuronal population vector.

Affective and cognitive reactions to subliminal flicker from fluorescent lighting

This study renews the classical concept of subliminal perception (Peirce & Jastrow, 1884) by investigating the impact of subliminal flicker from fluorescent lighting on affect and cognitive performance. It was predicted that low compared to high frequency lighting (latter compared to former emits non-flickering light) would evoke larger changes in affective states and also impair cognitive performance. Subjects reported high rather than low frequency lighting to be more pleasant, which, in turn, enhanced their problem solving performance. This suggests that sensory processing can take place outside of conscious awareness resulting in conscious emotional consequences; indicating a role of affect in subliminal/implicit perception, and that positive affect may facilitate cognitive task performance.