Xiao Kunchen, Zhang Anqi, Qu Jingke, Deng Feifei, Guo Chenyan, Yamauchi Takashi
Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610066, China.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235, USA.
Brain Sci. 2023 Aug 31;13(9):1267. doi: 10.3390/brainsci13091267.
Theories of embodied cognition suggest that hand motions and cognition are closely interconnected. An emerging technique of tracking how participants move a computer mouse (i.e., the mouse-tracking technique) has shown advantages over the traditional response time measurement to detect implicit cognitive conflicts. Previous research suggests that attention is essential for subliminal processing to take place at a semantic level. However, this assumption is challenged by evidence showing the presence of subliminal semantic processing in the near-absence of attention. The inconsistency of evidence could stem from the insufficient sensitivity in the response time measurement. Therefore, we examined the role of attention in subliminal semantic processing by analyzing participants' hand motions using the mouse-tracking technique. The results suggest that subliminal semantic processing is not only enhanced by attention but also occurs when attention is disrupted, challenging the necessity of facilitated top-down attention for subliminal semantic processing, as claimed by a number of studies. In addition, by manipulating the color of attentional cues, our experiment shows that the cue color per se could influence participants' response patterns. Overall, the current study suggests that attentional status and subliminal semantic processing can be reliably revealed by temporal-spatial features extracted from cursor motion trajectories.
具身认知理论表明，手部动作与认知紧密相连。一种追踪参与者如何移动电脑鼠标的新兴技术（即鼠标追踪技术）已显示出相较于传统反应时间测量方法在检测内隐认知冲突方面的优势。先前的研究表明，注意力对于语义层面的阈下加工至关重要。然而，有证据显示在几乎没有注意力的情况下也存在阈下语义加工，这一假设受到了挑战。证据的不一致可能源于反应时间测量的灵敏度不足。因此，我们通过使用鼠标追踪技术分析参与者的手部动作，研究了注意力在阈下语义加工中的作用。结果表明，阈下语义加工不仅会因注意力而增强，而且在注意力被干扰时也会发生，这对一些研究声称的阈下语义加工需要自上而下的注意力促进的必要性提出了挑战。此外，通过操纵注意力线索的颜色，我们的实验表明线索颜色本身会影响参与者的反应模式。总体而言，当前研究表明，从光标运动轨迹中提取的时空特征能够可靠地揭示注意力状态和阈下语义加工。
