Unconscious perception: attention, awareness, and control.
Conscious perception is substantially overestimated when standard measurement techniques are used. That overestimation has contributed to the controversial nature of studies of unconscious perception. A process-dissociation procedure (L. L. Jacoby, 1991) was used for separately estimating the contribution of conscious and unconscious perception to performance of a stem-completion task. Unambiguous evidence for unconscious perception was obtained in 4 experiments. In Experiment 1, decreasing the duration of a briefly presented word diminished the contribution of both conscious and unconscious perception. In Experiments 2-4, dividing attention reduced the contribution of conscious perception while leaving that of unconscious perception unchanged. Discussion focuses on the measurement of awareness and the relation between perception and memory.
Debner
J A
JA
Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Jacoby
L L
LL
D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D011939:Mental Recall; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014936:Word Association Tests