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Biomedical subjects

P M Merikle

Publications and source records attributed to P M Merikle.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Subliminal self-help audiotapes: a search for placebo effects.

Subliminal self-help audiotapes to aid weight loss were evaluated to determine if their apparent effectiveness is due to a placebo effect. All subjects were female students or staff who were both overweight and believed in the possible effectiveness of subliminal audiotapes. Three different groups of subjects were tested: One group listened to subliminal audiotapes purchased directly from a manufacturer, the 2nd group listened to comparable placebo tapes, and the 3rd group did not listen to any tapes at all. Each subject in each group was weighed once each week for 5 weeks. All 3 groups of subjects lost weight, and the average amount of weight lost by each group was approximately equivalent. These results provide no evidence that regular use of subliminal audiotapes leads to a placebo effect. Rather, the results suggest that regular use of subliminal audiotapes may simply make subjects more conscious of their weight.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

False recognition and perception without awareness.

Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) demonstrated that the probability of calling new test words "old" (i.e., false recognition) is biased by context words. When context words were briefly exposed and subjects were not informed of their presence, new words were called "old" more often if the context and test words were identical than if the context and test words were different. When the context words were presented at longer exposure durations and subjects were informed of their presence, the opposite pattern of results occurred. In Experiment 1, we replicated the critical qualitative difference across conditions reported by Jacoby and Whitehouse. In addition, the combined results of Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that the exposure duration of the context words, and not the instructions to the subjects, is the primary factor determining which pattern of false recognition occurs. However, in contrast with the findings of Jacoby and Whitehouse, both patterns of false recognition were associated with significant recognition memory for the context words. The latter finding presents problems for any interpretation of false recognition, which implies that the briefly exposed context words are perceived without awareness.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Recognition and lexical decision without detection: unconscious perception?

Stimulus detection and concurrent measures of stimulus recognition were compared to establish whether perception occurs in the absence of detection. The target stimuli were familiar words (Experiments 1 and 2), nonwords (Experiment 3), or both words and nonwords (Experiment 4). On each trial, either a stimulus or a blank field was presented. Ss first decided whether a stimulus had been presented and then made either a forced-choice recognition decision (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or a lexical decision (Experiment 4). Both words and nonwords were recognized and discriminated following correct detections (i.e., hits). However, in the absence of stimulus detection (i.e., misses), only words were recognized or discriminated. These qualitatively different patterns of results following hits and misses for words and nonwords suggest that stimulus detection may provide an adequate measure of conscious awareness.

Adult↗