title: Unconscious auditory information can prime visual word processing: a process-dissociation procedure study.
abstract: Whether information perceived without awareness can affect overt performance, and whether such effects can cross sensory modalities, remains a matter of debate. Whereas influence of unconscious visual information on auditory perception has been documented, the reverse influence has not been reported. In addition, previous reports of unconscious cross-modal priming relied on procedures in which contamination of conscious processes could not be ruled out. We present the first report of unconscious cross-modal priming when the unaware prime is auditory and the test stimulus is visual. We used the process-dissociation procedure [Debner, J. A., & Jacoby, L. L. (1994). Unconscious perception: Attention, awareness and control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 304-317] which allowed us to assess the separate contributions of conscious and unconscious perception of a degraded prime (either seen or heard) to performance on a visual fragment-completion task. Unconscious cross-modal priming (auditory prime, visual fragment) was significant and of a magnitude similar to that of unconscious within-modality priming (visual prime, visual fragment). We conclude that cross-modal integration, at least between visual and auditory information, is more symmetrical than previously shown, and does not require conscious mediation.
authors: Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, PO Box 39040, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. domi@post.tau.ac.il
authors: Dominique
authors: D
authors: Lamy
authors: Liad
authors: L
authors: Mudrik
authors: Leon Y
authors: LY
authors: Deouell
mesh_terms: D001307:Auditory Perception; D003243:Consciousness; D006801:Humans; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception; D014825:Vocabulary