Subliminal Perception: Unconscious Cognition

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Subliminal Perception Unconscious Cognition

• Unconscious Perception
• Selective Attention

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Objectives Be able to

• Discuss the differences in process between
  subjective and objective thresholds.
• Define subliminal perception.
• Define subliminal activation.

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Examples of Unconscious Cognition

• Highly practiced automatic acts - driving a car
• Without Mental Effort
• Without ability to remember details of what
  happened
• Monitoring of background conversations

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Two Senses of Unconscious

• Outside of Attention
• Lack or Failure of Introspection

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Outside of Attention

• Consciousness as the selective aspect of
  Attention
• Limits of cognitive analysis of registered, but
  unattended stimuli?
• Memory residue?

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Lack or Failure of Introspection

• Inability to report an experience validly
• Verbally unreportable experiences

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Levels of Analysis

• How smart is unconscious cognition?

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Subliminal Activation

• Subliminal Semantic Activation
• Objective and Subjective Thresholds

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Subliminal Semantic Activation

• Present a word subliminally
• Affects recognition of other words presented
  above threshold
• Affects spelling of other words presented above
  threshold

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Measuring Thresholds

• Objective thresholds
• Subjective thresholds

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Objective Thresholds

• present a word
• present a number of choices
• Participant must choose one of the choices
• Forced Choice - like multiple choice test
• None of the Above is not allowed
• Yields a low threshold

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Subjective Thresholds

• Present a word
• present choices or not
• Allow I dont know responses
• Yields a higher threshold

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Threshold for Subliminal Semantic Activation

• Between Objective and Subjective Thresholds
• Semantic activation also works very well above
  threshold
• Is there Subliminal Semantic Activation of
  Multi-word sequences??
• How could you know?

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Discussion Question 11

• Compare and contrast subjective and objective
  thresholds. Explain how they are important in
  subliminal perception.

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Discussion Question 12

• What does Greenwald mean by subliminal activation
  and what does he say are the necessary conditions
  for subliminal activation to occur? Discuss.

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Objectives Be able to

• Discuss the differences in process between
  subjective and objective thresholds.
• Define subliminal perception.
• Define subliminal activation.