Kouider Sid, Dupoux Emmanuel
Harvard University, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2004 Feb;15(2):75-81. doi: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01502001.x.
We argue that the lack of consensus regarding the existence of subliminal semantic processing arises from not taking into account the fact that linguistic stimuli are represented across several processing levels (features, letters, word form) that can independently reach or not reach awareness. Using masked words, we constructed conditions in which participants were aware of some letters or fragments of a word, while remaining unaware of the whole word. Three experiments using the Stroop priming paradigm show that when the stimulus set is reduced and participants are encouraged to guess the identity of the prime, such partially perceived stimuli can nonetheless give rise to "semantic" processing. We provide evidence that this effect is due to illusory reconstruction of the incompletely perceived stimulus, followed by usual semantic processing of the result. We conclude that previously reported unconscious Stroop priming is in fact a conscious effect, but applied to a perceptual illusion.
我们认为，关于阈下语义加工是否存在缺乏共识，是因为没有考虑到语言刺激在多个加工水平（特征、字母、词形）上的表征，这些加工水平可以独立地进入或不进入意识。我们使用掩蔽词构建了一些条件，在这些条件下，参与者能够意识到一个单词的某些字母或片段，而对整个单词却毫无察觉。使用斯特鲁普启动范式进行的三项实验表明，当刺激集减少且鼓励参与者猜测启动刺激的身份时，这种部分被感知的刺激仍然可以引发“语义”加工。我们提供的证据表明，这种效应是由于对未完全感知的刺激进行了虚幻的重构，随后对结果进行了常规的语义加工。我们得出结论，先前报道的无意识斯特鲁普启动实际上是一种有意识的效应，但应用于一种知觉错觉。
