momentary conscious pairing eliminates unconscious-stimulus influences on task selection短暂的有意识的配对消除unconscious-stimulus影响任务的选择.pdfVIP

Momentary Conscious Pairing Eliminates Unconscious- Stimulus Influences on Task Selection Fanzhi Anita Zhou*, Greg Davis Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom Abstract Task selection, previously thought to operate only under conscious, voluntary control, can be activated by unconsciously- perceived stimuli. In most cases, such activation is observed for unconscious stimuli that closely resemble other conscious, task-relevant stimuli and hence may simply reflect perceptual activation of consciously established stimulus-task associations. However, other studies have reported ‘direct’ unconscious-stimulus influences on task selection in the absence of any conscious, voluntary association between that stimulus and task (e.g., Zhou and Davis, 2012). In new experiments, described here, these latter influences on cued- and free-choice task selection appear robust and long-lived, yet, paradoxically, are suppressed to undetectable levels following momentary conscious prime-task pairing. Assessing, and rejecting, three intuitive explanations for such suppressive effects, we conclude that conscious prime-task pairing minimizes non-strategic influences of unconscious stimuli on task selection, insulating endogenous choice mechanisms from maladaptive external control. Citation: Zhou FA, Davis G (2012) Momentary Conscious Pairing Eliminates Unconscious-Stimulus Influences on Task Selection. PLoS ONE 7(9): e46320. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046320 Editor: Emmanuel Andreas Stamatakis, University Of Cambridge, United Kingdom Received May 30, 2012; Accepted August 31, 2012; Published September 25, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Zhou and Davis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the