Impact of subliminal stimuli on cognitive control processes
Final Report Abstract
The project aimed to study the conditions under which so called cognitive control operations can be induced without awareness of the control-inducing events. A first studied control operation concerned context-specific conflict adaptation. This phenomenon denotes the modulation of processing irrelevant information depending on the context-specific utility of that information. In a series of studies we manipulated the visibility of irrelevant information and/or context information. Our observations suggest that when context and conflict information are presented simultaneously, systematic covariations between them are acquired and used to modulate processing of the irrelevant information. Another control phenomenon studied was so called sequential conflict adaptation, which denotes the reduction of processing irrelevant information which turned out to be detrimental briefly before. We showed that unconscious conflict information is able to accumulate over time to lead to sequential conflict adaptation, which is an important factor to explain so far inconsistent findings in the literature. Finally, we were able to demonstrate that unconscious explicit cues are able to impact on the preparation of a response set, that unconscious task cues lead to neuronal response that indicates task preparation, and that the adjustment of speedaccuracy settings can be influenced unconsciously. Overall, we were thus successful in determining which control operations can be induced unconsciously under which conditions which was the main goal of the project. Both the intriguing and striking findings regarding unconscious adjustments of speed-accuracy settings and unconscious context-specific conflict adaptation provide many starting points and a solid base for further research on these subjects. We are thus convinced that the study of these phenomena is a promising avenue to further reveal the interplay of awareness and cognitive control.
Publications
- (2012). A cue from the unconscious - masked symbols prompt spatial anticipation. Frontiers in Psychology, 3:397
Reuss, H., Kiesel, A., Kunde, W., & Wühr, P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00397) - (2014). Action Video Gaming is associated with enhanced processing of masked stimuli. Frontiers in Cognition, 5:70
Pohl, C., Kunde, W., Ganz, T., Conzelmann, A., Pauli, P. & Kiesel, A.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00070) - (2014). Unconscious conflicts in unconscious contexts: The role of stimulus awareness in flexible conflict adaptation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1701-1718
Reuss, H., Desender, K., Kiesel, A., & Kunde, W.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036437) - (2015). Adjustments of response speed and accuracy to unconscious cues. Cognition, 134, 57-62
Reuss, H., Kiesel, A., & Kunde, W.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.09.005) - (2015). Instructed illiteracy reveals expertise-effects on unconscious processing. Front. Psychol. 6:239
Reuss, H., Kiesel, A. Pohl, C., Kunde, W.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00239)
