Parts outweigh the whole (word) in unconscious analysis of meaning.
In unconscious semantic priming, an unidentifiable visually masked word (the prime) facilitates semantic classification of a following visible related word (the target). Three experiments reported here provide evidence that masked primes are analyzed mainly at the level of word parts, not whole-word meaning. In Experiment 1, masked nonword primes composed of subword fragments of earlier-viewed targets functioned as effective evaluative primes. (For example, after repeated classification of the targets angel and warm, the nonword anrm acted as an evaluatively positive masked prime.) Experiment 2 showed that this part-word processing was potent enough to oppose analysis at the whole-word level. Thus, smile functioned as an evaluatively negative (!) masked prime after repeated classification of smut and bile. Experiment 3 found no priming when masked word primes contained no parts of earlier targets. These results suggest that robust unconscious priming (a) is driven by analysis of part-word information and (b) requires previous classification of visible targets that contain the fragments later serving as primes. Contrary to a widely held view, analysis of subliminal primes appears not to function at the level of analysis of complete words.
Psychology Department, University of Washington, Box 351525, Seattle, WA 98195-1525, USA. rlabrams@u.washington.edu or agg@u.washington.edu
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Abrams
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Greenwald
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology