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Unconscious Spacial Representation of Physical Size and Cover Area
Lin-Cheng HU
2013, 36(6):
1369-1374.
It is found that number comparison task and physical stimuli comparison task share the same process mechanism(Gallistel & Gelman, 2000). Unconscionsly, Dehaene, Naccache et al., (1998)and Naccache & Dehaene(2001) reveal that the unconscious semantic priming exists in number process. Hence the question is whether unconscious process exists in the process of number physical properties. The current study aims at whether priming effect and SNARC-like effect exist in the physical properties comparison task.
Adopting masked priming procedure of Naccache and Dehaene (2001) , experiment 1 explore whether SNARC and priming effect exist in both number comparison task and number physical size comparison task. Subjects’ task is to compare sematic magnitude between target stimuli and standard stimuli. Subjects must either compare the sematic magnitude of numbers with 5 or compare the physical size of numbers with the physical size of 5. The presentation of stimuli and collection of responses were controlled by E-Prime software(PST software, Pittsburgh, USA).
The experiment consists of 480 experimental trials. Each trial consists of senven events. First, present a blank cross on white screen; second, present standard stimulus 5 for 500 ms; third, present random letters as forward masking; fourth, present the priming stimulus for 43 ms or 33ms; fifth, present backward masking for 71 ms; sixth, present target stimulus for 200 ms; seventh, present some meaningless letters (e. g. , GMavBE) to suggest subject to react.
Statistical analysis indicates that SNARC effect is significant,F (1, 19) =7.05; MS=141913.64; p=0.008,the reaction speed of accordant group is faster than that of disagreement group(335 ms vs. 344 ms). The main effect of priming time is significant, F (1, 19) =3.94; MS=79336.68; p=.047. When priming time is 33 ms, SNARC effect is significant, F (1, 19) =12.43; MS =239654.57; p=.000, while priming time is 43 ms, SNARC effect is not significant, F (1, 19) =.07; MS =1356.13; p=.80. The results of experiment 1 indicate that in both number comparison task and number physical size comparison task, SNARC effect, SNARC-like effect,priming effect and Stroop effect exist in 33 ms priming condition. SNARC effect exists not only in number sematic comparison task unconsciously, but also in the task of number physical size comparison.
Experiment 2 is same with experiment 1 except for experimental materials. In Experiment 2, the number cover space replace the number physical size in Experiment 1. Statistical analysis indicates that the main effect of comparison task is significant, F (1, 20) =26.306; MS=370412.874; p=.000. The speed of number semantic comparison is 21 ms faster than that of number physical size comparison. SNARC effect is significant,F (1, 20) =24.756; MS=348579.132; p=0.000,the reaction speed of accordant group is faster than that of disagreement group(287 ms vs. 308 ms). Stroop effect is significant, F (1, 20) =6.608; MS=93038.800; p=.01, which means there is interaction between number semantic and number cover space in the comparison task. When smaller number combines with smaller cover space and bigger number combines with bigger cover space, reaction speed is faster, on the contrary, reaction speed is slower. The results indicate that SNARC-like effect, priming effect and Stroop effect also exist in number cover area comparison task in 33ms priming condition.
To sum up, under 33 ms unconscious priming condition, there are SNARC effect, SNARC-like effect,priming effect and Stroop effect in number sematic comparison task and number physical size comparison task.
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