[The influence of conscious and unconcious perception of emotional acoustic stimuli on time characteristics of respiration].

A set of physiological studies proves that conscious perception of affective stimuli influence on respiratory activity. Less is known about the effect of unconscious perception of emotional information on human breathing. The aim of current research is to compare time characteristics of respiration during unconscious and conscious perception of emotional stimuli. As emotionally provocative stimuli we used natural vocalizations of 3-month-old infants in different emotional state. Both ways of acoustic presentation--first-order unconscious and second-order conscious stimuli--were applied to the one subject within one experiment with a brief inter-trial interval. A comparative data analysis revealed significant changes in time characteristics of respiration in response to acoustic emotional stimuli perceived either consciously or unconsciously. The differences in respiratory dynamics during two conditions of emotional stimuli perception are discussed.