Semantic Activation Without Conscious Identification

Question 1

INTRO

Answer 1

• Consciousness

- SAWCI

Question 2

Consciousness

Answer 2

Attentional selection is reflected by consciousness of attended stimuli

Question 3

Semantic activation without conscious identification

Answer 3

Different experimental paradigms have tried to investigate existence of SAWCI

Question 4

MAIN BODY

Answer 4

• Dichotic Listening Tasks
• Evaluation
• Parafoveal vision experiments
• Evaluation
• Visual masking experimenting
• Evaluation

Question 5

Dichotic Listening Tasks: Corteen & Dunn (1973)

Answer 5

Pp showed GSR when words conditioned with electric shocks or associated words were presented in unattended channel

Suggests unattended channel’s words are processed at semantic level

Suggests there’s semantic generalisation

Suggests the selective process in attention comes after meaning of words has been accessed

Question 6

DLT Evaluation

Answer 6

• Wardlaw & Kroll (1976)- replicated experiment but unable to find same effect- suggests Corteen & Dunn (1973) pp may have sometimes been aware of unattended messages
• Unless we can be absolutely certain pp never become aware of unattended channel, DLT cannot provide sufficiently well-controlled experiments on which to base arguments about unconscious processing

Question 7

Parafoveal vision experiments

Answer 7

1 stimulus plan presented in centre of visual field, another in parafovea

Question 8

Underwood (1976)

Answer 8

Semantic info in unattended stimuli was processed outside conscious awareness

Question 9

Lambert (1988)

Answer 9

If an abrupt distractor semantically related to target appears for 30ms in the periphery, response to target slower

Question 10

PVE Evaluation

Answer 10

Both DLT & PVE cannot guarantee that pp is not voluntarily focusing attention

Question 11

Visual masking experiments

Answer 11

Pp shown word followed by mask

Question 12

Allport (1977)

Answer 12

Pp couldn’t consciously remember previously shown word but recalled words semantically related to it

Suggests that semantic activation happens before conscious identification of stimulus

Question 13

Marcel (1980)

Answer 13

Evidence of facilitation when primes masked by pattern mask

But when mask was random noise there was no priming

Evidence for 2 different kinds of masking

Noise mask- degrades the stimulus input early in processing, no priming

Pattern mask- doesn’t prevent the automatic & unconscious access to stored semantic info but prevents perceptual integration & hence access to consciousness

Question 14

Marcel (1983)

Answer 14

Regardless of mask condition, faster responses on congruent trials & slower responses on incongruent trials (stroop effect)

Suggests that unconscious semantic processing happens even if pp cannot consciously report it

Question 15

VME Evaluation

Answer 15

Marcel (1983)- used 60% detection threshold which is higher than chance threshold of 50%