Using masked priming to investigate the cognitive principles that govern unconscious processing and their effect on arithmetic fact retrieval

• Applicant: Daniele Didino, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 440648760

Unconscious visual processing of unseen stimuli is apt to modulate perception, cognition and performance. A well-established method to investigate the influence of unconscious processing on overt behavior is masked priming. In this method, participants have to classify a visible target stimulus that is preceded by an unseen prime stimulus. The visibility of the prime is reduced by presenting masking stimuli before and after it. Although the masking induces a subjective lack of awareness, the prime can influence overt behavior.Unconscious processing has a twofold role in this project. First, it will be used as a tool to influence and thus to investigate the processing stages occurring during arithmetic fact retrieval. Second, unconscious processing will be the cognitive phenomenon under investigation.The first objective of this project is to test hypotheses concerning the cognitive architecture that underpins multiplication fact retrieval (i.e., solving simple multiplications by means of direct retrieval from memory). The masked priming method will be used to interfere with specific processing stages that occur during the multiplication fact retrieval (based on the interacting neighbors model; Verguts & Fias, 2005a). The core idea is that it should be possible to influence and investigate the retrieval process by overlapping its execution with the processing of a masked prime consisting of a two-digit number. The prime will be manipulated to test assumptions concerning the temporal dynamics (i.e., temporal sequence) of the processing stages or their underlying representation format (e.g., componential vs. holistic representation).The idea of influencing multiplication fact retrieval using masked priming relies on the mechanisms that underpin the unconscious processing of symbolic numbers. The second objective of this project is to investigate how a masked prime is unconsciously processed. Number properties (e.g., magnitude, parity, and number words phonetical features) will be manipulated to address questions about the principles that underlie the processing of unconscious stimuli. Are primes semantically processed? Does the development of stimulus-response associations allow to by-pass the semantic representation? Are the cognitive operations applied to unconscious stimuli determined by top-down control and executive functions? Can an unconscious stimulus modify task-control representations (e.g., task-related rules and goals)? Results will also help to better understand the unconscious processing of stimuli other than numbers. In fact, similar mechanisms are likely to underpin unconscious processing regardless of the stimulus category (e.g. numbers, words or images).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants