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Results for “Subliminal Stimulation”

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PubMed1994

Reducing smoking. The effect of suggestion during general anaesthesia on postoperative smoking habits.

In a double-blind randomised trial, 122 female smokers undergoing elective surgery were allocated to receive one of two prerecorded messages while fully anaesthetised. The active message was designed to encourage them to give up smoking whilst the control message was the same voice counting numbers. No patient could recall hearing the tape. Patients were asked about their postoperative smoking behaviour one month later. Significantly more of those who had received the active tape had stopped or reduced their smoking (p < 0.01). This would suggest a level of preconscious processing of information.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1995

Submental stimulation and supraglottic resistance during mouth breathing.

We studied submental stimulation on supraglottic resistance (Rsg) in 5 normals and 6 patients with obstructive sleep apnea. We then examined the most effective sites of stimulation in the submental regions, and the relationships between Rsg and stimulation frequency and voltage in the supine position. Inspiratory and expiratory Rsg's were obtained as the slope of the linear portion of the pressure-flow relation determined at zero flow. Before stimulation, inspiratory and expiratory Rsg's were 0.76 +/- 0.06 (means +/- SE) and 0.61 +/- 0.02 cmH2O.L-1.sec, respectively, in normals, and 1.04 +/- 0.20 and 0.92 +/- 0.29 cmH2O.L-1.sec, respectively, in patients. Stimulation in the proximal half submental region with surface electrodes 1 cm apart decreased inspiratory and expiratory Rsg's in patients, and inspiratory Rsg in normals. Inspiratory Rsg measured in this submental region showed a stimulation frequency-and voltage-dependency in both groups, but expiratory Rsg did not. These findings suggest that submental stimulation in the proximal half region widens the supraglottic airway during mouth breathing and probably involves the upper airway muscles.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

On the verification of psychoanalytic concepts by extraclinical techniques.

A discussion of "Unconscious Symbiotic Fantasy: A Ubiquitous Therapeutic Agent" by Lloyd H. Silverman, Ph.D. Extraclinical research on propositions derived from the psychoanalytic process are useful and complementary. The rigor of statistical, reproducible experimental approaches adds strength to analytic knowledge. Caution is recommended, however, in interpreting results, because each method has its own natural yield and significance. The effect of stimulating unconscious symbiotic fantasies as inferred from clinical settings and transferred to an experimental model might be examined from the standpoint of situational and propositional homology, adequacy of methods of verification, experimental bias, and interpretation of the results. Dr. Silverman and his colleague's work is discussed from the vantage points outlined.

Humans↗
PubMed1985

Psychophysiological responses to masked auditory stimuli.

Psychophysiological responses to masked auditory verbal stimuli of increasing intensities were studied in twenty healthy women. Two experimental sessions corresponding to two stimulation contents (neutral or emotional) were conducted. At each session, two different sets of instructions (attending or not attending to stimuli) were used successively. Verbal stimuli, masked by a 40-dB white noise, were presented to the subject at increasing intensities by increments of 5 dB starting at 0 dB. At each increment, frontal EMG, skin conductance and heart rate were recorded. The data were submitted to analyses of variance and covariance. Psychophysiological responses to stimuli below the thresholds of identification and detection were observed. The instruction not to attend the stimuli modified the patterns of physiological responses. The effect of the affective content of the stimuli on responses was stronger when not attending. The results show the possibility of psychophysiological responses to masked auditory stimuli and suggests that psychophysiological parameters can constitute objective and useful measures for research in auditory subliminal perception.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Percutaneous magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex in migraine.

We have used transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex interictally in 12 patients with unilateral classic migraine with sensorimotor auras and 10 patients with common migraine and unilateral headache. In classic migraine, the threshold of activation of the FDI muscle by the cortical stimulus was significantly increased on the side of the auras, when compared to the unaffected side (P less than 0.01) and to normal subjects (P less than 0.01). The amplitude of EMG responses was also reduced in FDI on the affected side when compared to normals (P less than 0.02). Responses obtained in common migraine patients were normal on both sides. We suggest that some permanent subclinical dysfunction of the motor cortex might play a role in the pathogenesis of attacks of classic migraine with sensorimotor auras.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Preserved subliminal processing and impaired conscious access in schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Studies of visual backward masking have frequently revealed an elevated masking threshold in schizophrenia. This finding has frequently been interpreted as indicating a low-level visual deficit. However, more recent models suggest that masking may also involve late and higher-level integrative processes, while leaving intact early bottom-up visual processing. OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that the backward-masking deficit in schizophrenia corresponds to a deficit in the late stages of conscious perception, whereas the subliminal processing of masked stimuli is fully preserved. DESIGN: Twenty-eight patients with schizophrenia and 28 normal control subjects performed 2 backward-masking experiments. We used Arabic digits as stimuli and varied quasi-continuously the interval with a subsequent mask, thus allowing us to progressively unmask the stimuli. We finely quantified their degree of visibility using objective and subjective measures to evaluate the threshold duration for access to consciousness. We also studied the priming effect caused by the variably masked numbers in a comparison task performed on a subsequently presented and highly visible target number. RESULTS: The threshold delay between the digit and mask necessary for the conscious perception of the masked stimulus was longer in patients compared with controls. This higher consciousness threshold in patients was confirmed by an objective and a subjective measure, and both measures were highly correlated for the patients and controls. However, subliminal priming of masked numbers was effective and identical in patients and controls. CONCLUSIONS: Access to conscious report of masked stimuli is impaired in schizophrenia, whereas fast bottom-up processing of the same stimuli, as assessed by subliminal priming, is preserved. These findings suggest a high-level origin of the masking deficit in schizophrenia, although they leave open for further research its exact relation to previously identified bottom-up visual processing abnormalities.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

No evidence for a selective processing of subliminally presented body words in restrained eaters.

OBJECTIVE: In the present study, it was hypothesized that restrained eating subjects will show an attentional bias for body shape and weight words during the automatic stage of information processing and not during the strategic or controlled stage. METHOD: Thirteen high restrained and fifteen low restrained eaters participated in the experiment. Body shape and weight words as well as neutral words were presented both supraliminally and subliminally during a computerized Stroop task. RESULTS: The high restrained eaters did not show distortions in the processing of body shape and weight stimuli; neither an early automatic processing priority nor a pattern of strategic processing selectivity characterizes restrained eaters. DISCUSSION: The absence of cognitive distortions in the processing of body shape and weight information might point to a qualitative difference between normal restrained eaters and subjects with eating disorders of clinical severity.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

The impact of emotion upon eating behavior: the role of subliminal visual processing of threat cues.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research has demonstrated that subliminal threat cues can influence eating behavior. The present study examined whether this effect is due to general emotional activation (by comparing positive and negative emotional cues), whether it is a product of specific negative emotional activation, and whether it can be achieved by activating appetite-related schemata. METHOD: One hundred women avoided food for at least 4 hr and then completed a task where they were exposed to one of five subliminal visual cues. The dependent variable was the amount eaten subsequently. RESULTS: Women who were exposed to the abandonment cue (lonely) ate significantly more than those who were exposed to the neutral cue (gallery), the positive emotional cue (happy), or the appetitive cue (hungry). Those with unhealthy eating attitudes also ate more after the hostile emotion cue (angry) than after the neutral cue. CONCLUSIONS: The results support cognitive models that stress an important role for threat processing in the facilitation of eating, rather than models advocating the centrality of food-related information. Abandonment schemata appear to be activated at an earlier stage than appetite-related schemata.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

An experimental test of the relationship between self-esteem and concern about body shape and weight in restrained eaters.

OBJECTIVE: Although self-esteem and overconcern with body shape and weight are considered to be closely connected in bulimia nervosa, little empirical research has been done to investigate the alleged link. METHOD: In this study, we examined experimentally whether overconcern with body shape and weight was connected with self-esteem in an analogue sample of high restrained eaters by means of a subliminal lexical decision task. RESULTS: It could indeed be demonstrated that low self-esteem and overconcern with body shape and weight are associated in high restrained eaters: after priming low self-esteem, the accessibility of subliminally presented body shape and weight stimuli was increased. The effect was not found with a supraliminal lexical decision task. DISCUSSION: Apparently, the automatic, nonconscious processing of body shape and weight words was influenced in high restrained eaters with a low state self-esteem, whereas the strategic, conscious processing was not. As soon as the body shape and weight stimuli were processed consciously, the initial increased accessibility was countered and the effect disappeared.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Neuroanatomical organization of perceptual memory: an fMRI study of picture priming.

Neuroanatomical organization of perceptual representation in human memory system is unclear primarily because it has been studied using paradigms that have both, perceptual and conceptual components (e.g., word stem completion and word fragment completion). In the present experiment, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique was used to examine the pattern of cortical activation in a picture identification test in which subjects were asked to identify subliminally presented primed and novel pictures. This test is a modification of the word identification test that is considered a "pure" form of perceptual priming. Results indicate that perceptual priming is associated with reduced activation in the extrastriate cortex and that the memory for subliminally presented stimuli is processed by the same brain areas that process adequate stimuli. The activation pattern observed in picture identification test is different from that reported in the experiments of conceptual priming, suggesting that perceptual and conceptual representation of memory are supported by separate brain mechanisms.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

The effects of unconscious presentation of information on therapist conceptualizations, intentions, and responses.

This article presents a study of the effects of tachistoscopic presentation of affective words on subjects' conceptualizations, intentions, and responses to a simulated client. The participants, 36 counseling students, were assigned randomly to one of the following treatments: subliminal presentation of negative emotional concepts; subliminal presentation of positive emotional concepts; supraliminal presentation of positive emotional concepts. After the tachistoscopic presentations, all subjects were exposed to a simulated client, whom they were asked to evaluate, respond to, and report the cognitive intentions that guided their responses. Significant effects were found in the subliminal presentation of positive emotional concepts on subjects' conceptualizations, intentions, and responses. Some significant effects also were found for the supraliminal presentation, but only for the client evaluation measure.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Critical importance of stimulus unawareness for the production of subliminal psychodynamic activation effects: a meta-analytic review.

Meta-analysis that assessed the magnitude of behavior change produced by subliminal vs. supraliminal drive-related stimuli was performed on all subliminal psychodynamic activation (SPA) studies that employed both types of stimuli (N of studies = 11, N of subliminal-supraliminal comparisons = 43). The analysis revealed that subliminal presentation of drive-related stimuli produced significantly stronger effects on behavior than supraliminal presentation of the same stimuli. Stimulus content, type of outcome measure, and subject characteristics all influenced the magnitude of subliminal-supraliminal response differences. These results support Silverman's (1983) hypothesis that drive-related stimuli must be presented subliminally in order to produce SPA effects. Furthermore, given the pattern of subliminal-supraliminal effect sizes obtained, a partial cue hypothesis of SPA effects is not tenable. Implications of these findings for research that examines the restricting effects of awareness on responding to drive- and affect-related stimuli are discussed.

Arousal↗
PubMed1997

Evaluative learning with "subliminally" presented stimuli.

Evaluative learning refers to the change in the affective evaluation of a previously neutral stimulus (NS) that occurs after the stimulus has been associated with a second, positive or negative, affective stimulus (AS). Four experiments are reported in which the AS was presented very briefly. Significant evaluative learning was observed in participants who did not notice the presentation of the affective stimuli (ASi) (Experiment 2) or could not discriminate between the briefly presented positive and negative ASi when asked to do so (Experiment 3). In two other experiments (Experiments 1 and 4), no significant learning effect was obtained. A meta-analysis performed on the present and previously reported results (De Houwer, Baeyens, & Eelen, 1994) gave evidence for a small, though statistically reliable evaluative learning effect when ASi are presented "subliminally." This finding supports the hypothesis that evaluative associations can be learned implicitly.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Confidence and accuracy of near-threshold discrimination responses.

This article reports four subliminal perception experiments using the relationship between confidence and accuracy to assess awareness. Subjects discriminated among stimuli and indicated their confidence in each discrimination response. Subjects were classified as being aware of the stimuli if their confidence judgments predicted accuracy and as being unaware if they did not. In the first experiment, confidence predicted accuracy even at stimulus durations so brief that subjects claimed to be performing at chance. This finding indicates that subjects's claims that they are "just guessing" should not be accepted as sufficient evidence that they are completely unaware of the stimuli. Experiments 2-4 tested directly for subliminal perception by comparing the minimum exposure duration needed for better than chance discrimination performance against the minimum needed for confidence to predict accuracy. The latter durations were slightly but significantly longer, suggesting that under certain circumstances people can make perceptual discriminations even though the information that was used to make those discriminations is not consciously available.

Attitude↗
PubMed1996

Breakthrough to awareness: a preliminary neural network model of conscious and unconscious perception in word processing.

A neural network model is constructed to mimic the processing involved in semantic and working memory when subliminal effects are involved. These effects involve modifications of reaction time to later inputs, according to whether or not there has been conscious or unconscious processing of the earlier input. The model is constructed of two separate modules: one (a semantic memory module) allowing for processing at a semantic, but unconscious, level, and the other (a working memory module) for conscious experience. The latter module, although a replica of the earlier one, has different lateral connectivity and output function from the former. The model is shown to give a good fit to Marcel's data on the processing of polysemous words. Further tests are suggested for the model, and a possible cortical implementation suggested. The relevance of the model to recent approaches to consciousness is also explored.

Consciousness↗