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- Title
Unconscious priming of task sets: The role of spatial attention.
- Authors
Zhou, Fanzhi; Davis, Greg
- Abstract
Unconscious stimuli activate task sets, mental programs that orchestrate performance of complex tasks, but the role of attention in such effects has not been addressed. In previous studies, unconscious prime stimuli appeared at attended locations and were explicitly specified in the task instructions; spatial attention to the prime and/or a specific conscious attentional set may thus be required for such unconscious activation to arise. In the present experiments, a learning phase established associations between unconscious prime stimuli and performance of two tasks. These associations influenced task performance in a subsequent test phase, even though the primes were not specified in current task instructions. This is the first demonstration that unconscious stimuli can prime task sets independently of a current attentional set that specifies stimulus-task mappings. Such priming was not influenced by spatial attention cues, in contrast to clear attention influences in comparison trials that mimicked conditions employed by previous studies.
- Subjects
PRIMING (Psychology); SUBLIMINAL perception; MENTAL suggestion; THOUGHT &; thinking; ATTENTION; PREFRONTAL cortex
- Publication
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 2012, Vol 74, Issue 1, p105
- ISSN
1943-3921
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3758/s13414-011-0221-8