Yaron Itay, Faivre Nathan, Mudrik Liad, Mazor Matan
Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Haim Levanon 55, Tel Aviv, Israel.
University Grenoble Alpes, University Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LPNC, Grenoble, France.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Mar 24. doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02679-5.
A wave of criticisms and replication failures is currently challenging claims about the scope of unconscious perception and cognition. Such failures to find unconscious processing effects at the population level may reflect the absence of individual-level effects, or alternatively, the averaging out of individual-level effects with opposing signs. Importantly, only the first suggests that consciousness may be necessary for the tested process to take place. To arbitrate between these two possibilities, we tested previously collected data where unconscious processing effects were not found (26 effects from 470 participants), using five frequentist and Bayesian tests that are robust to individual differences in effect signs. By and large, we found no reliable evidence for unconscious effects being masked by individual differences. In contrast, when we examined 136 non-significant effects from other domains, two novel non-parametric tests did reveal effects that were hidden by opposing individual results, though as we show, some of them might be driven by design-related factors. Taken together, five analysis approaches provide strong evidence for the restricted nature of unconscious processing effects not only across participants, but also across different trials within individuals. We provide analysis code and best-practice recommendations for testing for non-directional effects.
目前，一波批评和重复实验失败的浪潮正在挑战关于无意识感知和认知范围的论断。在总体水平上未能发现无意识加工效应，可能反映出个体水平效应不存在，或者相反，是具有相反符号的个体水平效应相互抵消了。重要的是，只有第一种情况表明意识对于所测试的过程发生可能是必要的。为了在这两种可能性之间做出判断，我们对之前收集的未发现无意识加工效应的数据（来自470名参与者的26个效应）进行了测试，使用了五种对效应符号的个体差异具有稳健性的频率主义和贝叶斯检验。总体而言，我们没有发现可靠证据表明无意识效应被个体差异所掩盖。相比之下，当我们检查来自其他领域的136个非显著效应时，两种新颖的非参数检验确实揭示了被相反的个体结果所隐藏的效应，不过正如我们所表明的，其中一些可能是由设计相关因素驱动的。综合来看，五种分析方法提供了有力证据，证明无意识加工效应不仅在参与者之间，而且在个体内部的不同试验中都具有局限性。我们提供了用于检验非定向效应的分析代码和最佳实践建议。
