Katia Duscherer

Unconscious perception: the need for a paradigm shift.

According to Snodgrass, Bernat, and Shevrin (2004), unconscious perception can be demonstrated convincingly only at the objective detection threshold, provided that the conditions of theirobjective detection/strategic model are met, whereas both thesubjective threshold model of Cheesman and Merikle (1984, 1986) and theobjective threshold/rapid decay model of Greenwald, Draine, and Abrams (1996) are inconclusive. We argue on theoretical, metatheoretical, and empirical grounds that all three dual-process models, which are based on both conscious and unconscious perception, should be rejected in favor of thesingle-process conscious perception model.

No negative semantic priming from unconscious flanker words in sight.

In replicating 1 of the within-language conditions of E. Foxs (1996) Experiment 1, the authors confirmed that unattended words presented 2.4 degrees above and below fixation are mostly unavailable to awareness. However, no negative semantic priming was observed in a lexical decision on a probe letter string appearing about 1 s later, which does not replicate Foxs finding. These results are compatible with the hypothesis underlying the present study, according to which positive semantic priming, if any, rather than negative semantic priming is expected in Foxs situation. The reason is that unavailability to awareness of the parafoveal words is not achieved by means of an act of selective inhibition combined with attentional diversion through masking but is achieved simply by means of perceptual degradation.

Revisiting the affective Simon effect

We replicated the affective Simon effect found by De Houwer and Eelen (1998) in a situation in which participants had to respond by saying positive or negative depending on the grammatical category of the stimulus words while ignoring their affective connotation. Our results show that the affective Simon effect can be modulated by varying the proportion of experimental stimuli bearing a strongly polarised affective connotation. We propose that affective Simon effect depends at least in part on participants’ awareness of the correspondence between the affective connotation of the words and the responses. We also submit that this effect might not be specific to affective processing in that it is a token of a vast category of congruity effects that can be based on any kind of meaning of the stimuli, whether semantic or affective.

The Role of Decision Biases in Semantic Priming Effects

At least a part of semantic priming effects observed in binary decision tasks is supposed to be caused by decision biases. A semantic relationship between prime and target could positively bias a “yes” response, whereas the absence of a relationship would instead favour a “no” response to the same target. We tested this assumption with a semantic categorization task in which participants were induced to associate different values - positive, negative, or neutral - to each of the categorization decisions. Although semantic priming effects were obtained even with negatively valued decisions, they were substantially enhanced with positively valued decisions, confirming the influence of a decision bias induced presumptively by a post-lexical relatedness judgement.

Normes d'associations verbales pour 151 verbes d'action

Cet article rapporte des normes d’associations verbales pour 151 verbes d’action francais. Ces normes ont ete recueillies par ecrit au moyen d’une procedure d’association verbale libre, chaque mot ayant ete presente a 100 adultes francophones, âges de 19 a 42 ans. La constitution de ces normes a comme but principal de remedier a l’absence de donnees psycholinguistiques pour les verbes alors qu’il y a abondance de donnees pour les noms. Ces normes pourraient etre particulierement utiles pour les etudes portant sur la specificite des representations lexico-semantiques des verbes, sur les representations et le traitement des actions, ou encore sur les pathologies associees, comme les aphasies, les anomies ou les apraxies.

Unconscious semantic access: A case against a hyperpowerful unconscious

We analyze some of the recent evidence for unconscious semantic access stemming from tasks that, although based on a priming procedure, generate semantic congruity effects because of response competition, not semantic priming effects. We argue that such effects cannot occur without at least some glimpses of awareness about the identity and the meaning of a significant proportion of the primes.

Recueil d’Associations Verbales chez des Enfants de 5 à 11 Ans pour 76 Verbes d’Action en Langue Française

Cet article presente des normes d’associations verbales relatives a 76 verbes d’action francais pour quatre groupes de 50 enfants scolarises dans le canton de Geneve dans les classes de 1ere enfantine (5 ans), 1ere primaire (7 ans), 3eme primaire (9 ans), et de 5eme primaire (11 ans), respectivement. Ces normes ont ete etablies au moyen d’une procedure d’association verbale libre, oralement pour les enfants des degres inferieurs, par ecrit pour les enfants des degres superieurs. Ces normes remedient a l’absence de telles donnees pour les verbes concernant les enfants d’âge scolaire. Elles seront particulierement utiles pour les etudes portant sur l’acquisition du vocabulaire, sur le developpement conceptuel ou sur les representations des verbes et des actions.