title: Subliminal primes for global or local processing influence judgments of vehicular traffic.
abstract: Previous studies on semantic priming show that briefly presented words can unconsciously manipulate subjects' mental states, behaviors, and attitudes. Here we evaluated whether semantic primes can also manipulate the breadth of subjects' visual attention. We primed participants with briefly presented words that indicate either broadness or narrowness; each prime was followed by either a large or a small picture of a street intersection with vehicles, and participants had to indicate in which order the vehicles were legally allowed to pass the intersection. Participants responded to large pictures faster when primed with words denoting broadness, and to small pictures faster when primed with words denoting narrowness. From this we concluded that semantic priming can be effectively applied to manipulate the breadth of attention, which could be exploited in real-world scenarios.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive and Team/Racket Sport Research, German Sport University Cologne, Germany. Electronic address: s.huettermann@dshs-koeln.de.
authors.forename: Stefanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hüttermann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physiology and Anatomy, German Sport University Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Otmar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bock
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive and Team/Racket Sport Research, German Sport University Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Memmert
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attentional breadth; Global attention; Local attention; Subliminal priming