Neuro-cognitive mechanisms of conscious and unconscious visual perception                         

Research Network

Principal investigator

Prof. Dr. Uwe Mattler

Georg-August -University, Göttingen

Research associate

Simon Palmer

Project description

To what extend is the direction of spatial visual attention modulated by unconscious visual stimuli? Previous research has shown that visual prime stimuli can affect behavior even when primes are made invisible by masking. When participants shift their attention in response to a cue either to auditory or visual target stimuli, the classification of these target stimuli is facilitated if a previously presented prime indicated the same (congruent trials) rather than the alternative target modality (incongruent trials). This project aims to examine whether spatial cueing is modulated by masked primes in the same way as non-spatial cueing. Moreover, the locus of these priming effects (perception, decision, internal/external responses) is examined by signal detection analyses and electrophysiological measures. If the prime is followed by a separate mask processing can be facilitated by incongruent rather than congruent primes (“inverse priming effects” or “negative compatibility effects”). A corresponding set of experiments aims to examine inverse  priming in a spatial cueing paradigm. If spatial and non-spatial cue priming effects result from a common basic principle, both should follow the same laws. If this principle consists in the ability of unconscious visual stimuli to initiate internal responses, spatial cue priming effects should be located in the modulation of early target processing. In this case, a modified version of the accumulator model proposed by Vorberg et al. (2003) could account for this broad class of priming effects.

Selected papers

Mattler, U (2007). Inverse Target- and Cue-Priming Effects of Masked Stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 83-102.

Mattler, U. (2006). On the Locus of Priming and Inverse Priming Effects. Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 975-991.

Mattler, U. (2003). Priming of Mental Operations by Masked Stimuli. Perception & Psychophysics, 65, 167-187.

Effects of unconscious stimuli on endogenous shifts of spatial attention

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funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

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