Unconscious Color Priming Occurs at Stimulus- Not Percept-Dependent Levels of Processing

Authors: Breitmeyer B.G.¹; Ro T.²; Singhal N.S.²

Source: Psychological Science, Volume 15, Number 3, March 2004 , pp. 198-202(5)

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Abstract:

Although past studies have shown that visual information can be processed without awareness, the types and levels of this processing have yet to be determined. We used metacontrast masking to explore unconscious priming effects of white, blue, and green stimuli generated on a color video display. We found that a white prime tends to act more like a green than a blue one. Color confusions among unmasked and masked primes and calibrations of the display phosphors show that physical rather than perceptual properties of the stimuli best explain the white prime's effects. We conclude that unconscious color priming in normal observers occurs at early wavelength-dependent levels of processing prior to later color-percept-dependent levels.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.01503009.x

Affiliations: 1: Department of Psychology and Center for Neuro-Engineering and Cognitive Science, University of Houston, and 2: Department of Psychology, Rice University

Publication date: 2004-03-01