scholarly journals Diffusion Model-based Understanding of Unconscious Affective Priming in Continuous Flash Suppression

Author(s):  
Minchul Kim ◽  
Jeeyeon Kim ◽  
Jaejoong Kim ◽  
Bumseok Jeong

Abstract Affective states influence our decisions even when processed unconsciously. Continuous flash suppression (CFS) is a new variant of binocular rivalry that can be used to render the prime invisible and thus unconscious. Nonetheless, it is unclear how prior information from emotional faces provided by CFS influences subsequent decision making. Here, we employed the CFS priming task to examine the effect of nonconscious information on the evaluation of target words as either positive or negative. The hierarchical diffusion model was used to investigate the underlying mechanisms. Two experiments were performed to investigate the effects of facial identity and facial expression. As a result, a significant affective priming effect on response time was observed only for angry faces but not happy and neutral faces. The results of diffusion model analyses revealed that both the drift rate and nondecisional process are accountable for the ‘positive bias’ - the processing advantage of positive over negative stimuli. Priming effects of facial identity were mapped onto the drift rate and eliminated ‘positive bias’. Meanwhile, positive emotional faces increased the nondecision time with negative target words. The model-based analysis implies that both facial identity and emotion are processed under CFS.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minchul Kim ◽  
Jeeyeon Kim ◽  
Jaejoong Kim ◽  
Bumseok Jeong

AbstractAffective states influence our decisions even when processed unconsciously. Continuous flash suppression (CFS) is a new variant of binocular rivalry that can be used to render the prime subliminal. Nonetheless, how prior information from emotional faces suppressed by CFS influences subsequent decision-making remains unclear. Here, we employed a CFS priming task to examine the effect of the two main types of information conveyed by faces, i.e., facial identity and emotion, on the evaluation of target words as positive or negative. The hierarchical diffusion model was used to investigate the underlying mechanisms. A significant interaction effect on response time was observed following the angry face prime but not the happy or neutral face primes. The results of the diffusion model analyses revealed that the priming effects of facial identity were mapped onto the drift rate and erased the ‘positive bias’ (the processing advantage of positive over negative stimuli). Meanwhile, the positive emotional faces increased the nondecision time in response to negative target words. The model-based analysis implies that both facial identity and emotion are processed under CFS.


Author(s):  
Michael P. Berner ◽  
Markus A. Maier

Abstract. Results from an affective priming experiment confirm the previously reported influence of trait anxiety on the direction of affective priming in the naming task ( Maier, Berner, & Pekrun, 2003 ): On trials in which extremely valenced primes appeared, positive affective priming reversed into negative affective priming with increasing levels of trait anxiety. Using valenced target words with irregular pronunciation did not have the expected effect of increasing the extent to which semantic processes play a role in naming, as affective priming effects were not stronger for irregular targets than for regular targets. This suggests the predominant operation of a whole-word nonsemantic pathway in reading aloud in German. Data from neutral priming trials hint at the possibility that negative affective priming in participants high in trait anxiety is due to inhibition of congruent targets.


1987 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 935-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Brody ◽  
Steve E. Goodman ◽  
Ethan Halm ◽  
Stephen Krinzman ◽  
Marc M. Sebrechts

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 553
Author(s):  
Chenggang Wu ◽  
Juan Zhang ◽  
Zhen Yuan

In order to explore the affective priming effect of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words, the current study used unmasked (Experiment 1) and masked (Experiment 2) priming paradigm by including emotion-label words (e.g., sadness, anger) and emotion-laden words (e.g., death, gift) as primes and examined how the two kinds of words acted upon the processing of the target words (all emotion-laden words). Participants were instructed to decide the valence of target words, and their electroencephalogram was recorded at the same time. The behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) results showed that positive words produced a priming effect whereas negative words inhibited target word processing (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, the inhibition effect of negative emotion-label words on emotion word recognition was found in both behavioral and ERP results, suggesting that modulation of emotion word type on emotion word processing could be observed even in the masked priming paradigm. The two experiments further supported the necessity of defining emotion words under an emotion word type perspective. The implications of the findings are proffered. Specifically, a clear understanding of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words can improve the effectiveness of emotional communications in clinical settings. Theoretically, the emotion word type perspective awaits further explorations and is still at its infancy.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan J. Evans

Evidence accumulation models (EAMs) – the dominant modelling framework for speeded decision-making – have become an important tool for model application. Model application involves using specific model to estimate parameter values that relate to different components of the cognitive process, and how these values differ over experimental conditions and/or between groups of participants. In this context, researchers are often agnostic to the specific theoretical assumptions made by different EAM variants, and simply desire a model that will provide them with an accurate measurement of the parameters that they are interested in. However, recent research has suggested that the two most commonly applied EAMs – the diffusion model and the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA) – come to fundamentally different conclusions when applied to the same empirical data. The current study provides an in-depth assessment of the measurement properties of the two models, as well as the mapping between, using two large scale simulation studies and a reanalysis of Evans (2020a). Importantly, the findings indicate that there is a major identifiability issue within the standard LBA, where differences in decision threshold between conditions are practically unidentifiable, which appears to be caused by a tradeoff between the threshold parameter and the overall drift rate across the different accumulators. While this issue can be remedied by placing some constraint on the overall drift rate across the different accumulators – such as constraining the average drift rate or the drift rate of one accumulator to have the same value in each condition – these constraints can qualitatively change the conclusions of the LBA regarding other constructs, such as non-decision time. Furthermore, all LBA variants considered in the current study still provide qualitatively different conclusions to the diffusion model. Importantly, the current findings suggest that researchers should not use the unconstrained version of the LBA for model application, and bring into question the conclusions of previous studies using the unconstrained LBA.


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