Implicit Processing of Emotional Chinese Words
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Yang, Yung-Hao
Abstract
There has been increasing evidence showing that emotionally significant stimuli are processed differently than neutral ones. However, no consensus has been reached as to whether emotional Chinese words can be processed implicitly, partly due to the debatable criteria of defining the threshold of implicit or unconscious processing. To ensure that the stimuli were indeed unseen to the observer, we used a newly developed paradigm, the continuous flash suppression (Tsuchiya & Koch, 2005), to examine this issue. Emotional Chinese words were presented to one eye, and a series of high-contrast dynamic Mondrians were presented to the other eye. Participants were asked to press a key when they detected the word, and reaction times needed for them to release from suppression due to binocular rivalry were measured as the time for implicit processing of words under the invisible condition. In Experiment 1, we manipulated two factors: the orientation of the words (upright vs. inverted) and the emotional valence (positive, negative, and neutral). Results showed that, emotional words required longer time to be released from suppression, compared to neutral words, and the word inversion effects were found for positive and neutral words. Experiment 2 controlled for the structural role of the words and found the same results as in Experiment 1. Results in Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility of response bias. We conclude that emotional Chinese words could be processed differently from the neutral ones even when it is invisible to the observer in the interocular suppression phase.
Subjects
implicit processing
emotion
Chinese words
Continuous flash suppression
binocular rivalry.
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