title: Exploring the boundary conditions of unconscious numerical priming effects with continuous flash suppression.
abstract: The scope and limits of unconscious processing are a controversial topic of research in experimental psychology. Particularly within the visual domain, a wide range of paradigms have been used to experimentally manipulate perceptual awareness. A recent study reported unconscious numerical processing during continuous flash suppression (CFS), which is a powerful variant of interocular suppression and disrupts the conscious perception of visual stimuli for up to seconds. Since this finding of a distance-dependent priming effect contradicts earlier results showing that interocular suppression abolishes semantic processing, we sought to investigate the boundary conditions of this effect in two experiments. Using statistical analyses and experimental designs that precluded an effect of target numerosity, we found evidence for identity priming, but no conclusive evidence for distance-dependent numerical priming under CFS. Our results suggest that previous conclusions on high-level numerical priming under interocular suppression may have been premature.
authors.affiliation: Visual Perception Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité - Universitätsmedizin, 10117 Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: guido.hesselmann@charite.de.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hesselmann
authors.affiliation: Visual Perception Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité - Universitätsmedizin, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Darcy
authors.affiliation: Visual Perception Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité - Universitätsmedizin, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sterzer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Knops
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013334:Students; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Continuous flash suppression; Interocular suppression; Number processing; Priming