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Consciousness and Cognition
Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 7283 www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Conscious contributions to subliminal priming

Piotr Jaskowski
Department of Cognitive Psychology, University of Finance and Management, Pawia 55, Warszawa, Poland Received 4 August 2006 Available online 28 November 2006

Abstract Choice reaction times to visual stimuli (targets) may be inuenced by preceding subliminal stimuli (primes). Some authors reported a straight priming eect i.e., responses were faster when primes and targets called for the same response than when they called for dierent responses. Others found the reversed pattern of results. Eimer and Schlaghecken [Eimer, M. & Schlaghecken, F. (2002). Links between conscious awareness and response inhibition: evidence from masked priming. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 514520.] showed recently that straight priming occurs whenever a prime is not eciently masked thereby the information provided by the prime is accessible for consciousness. In the present study, a hypothesis is tested that straight priming is due to mediation of consciousness. To test this hypothesis, prime validity was manipulated. We showed that even when no mask was used so that participants could fully and consciously perceive the prime and participants were informed that primes were mostly invalid, for the short primetarget ISI interval (100 ms) straight priming occurred. The priming was inverse when the ISI was 800 ms. This indicates that participants were able to use the information provided by the prime to prepare the response opposite to that cued by the prime but only if the time between the prime and the target was long enough. 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Subliminal and supraliminal priming; Straight and inverse priming; Intention; Top-down control

1. Introduction Many authors have been claiming that invisible stimuli can have an unconscious inuence on behavior. In a typical experiment, a briey presented visual stimulus (prime) being masked by a subsequent stimulus (the mask) so that it is rendered invisible can aect the reaction to the next stimulus (the target). Usually, this inuence is facilitatory if prime and target are compatible (i.e. call for the same response) and inhibitory if they are incompatible (i.e. call for dierent responses) (Cheesman & Merikle, 1984; Dehaene et al., 1998; Merikle & Joordens, 1997a, 1997b). However, Eimer and Schlaghecken (1998), showed that the reverse situation can occur, too. They used arrows pointing to the left or right as primes and targets. The mask was a superimposition of the left- and right-pointing arrows (e.g. Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998) or randomly arranged short and long lines (e.g. Eimer & Schlaghecken, 2002). Eimer and Schlagheken showed that reactions in compatible trials were delayed rather than facilitated. Since in this case reactions to targets are facilitated in the incompatible
E-mail address: jaskowski@vizja.pl 1053-8100/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2006.10.003

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trials and inhibited in the compatible trials this eect is called inverse priming as opposed to straight priming (Verleger, Jaskowski, Aydemir, Van der Lubbe, & Groen, 2004). To account for their ndings, Eimer and Schlaghecken (Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998; Schlaghecken & Eimer, 2002) developed a model which assumed that each prime initially triggers an activation of the response assigned to this prime. This activation is subsequently followed by a self-inhibition. Therefore, if a target is displayed shortly after a prime straight priming occurs because target coincides with the prime-induced activation phase. If the primetarget interval is long enough inverse priming occurs because the target appears during the inhibition phase. These predictions were corroborated by empirical ndings showing that straight priming occurs for short primetarget intervals and inverse priming occurs when primetarget intervals was longer than about 100 ms (Schlaghecken & Eimer, 1997, 2000). More recently, Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) reported that one more factor determining the sign of priming eect is prime visibility. By varying the number of line elements that formed the mask they showed that priming depended strongly on prime visibility: when the mask contained only few lines, leaving the primes visible, priming eects were straight. Inverse priming was obtained when the mask contained more line elements, thus making prime identication impossible. Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) concluded that with incomplete masking primes remain accessible to conscious awareness (as inferred from above chance identication performance), and no response inhibition is elicited. We assume that the absence of response inhibition with suprathreshold primes is due to the fact that consciously accessible perceptual information counteracts the automatic operation of self-inhibitory motor control circuits. (. . .) The present results suggest that consciously available information is also relevant when automatic eects of self-inhibitory motor control mechanisms have to be overcome in order to initiate or maintain intentional action. [p. 520] It is clear that a direct relationship between conscious awareness of a prime and the magnitude of the priming eect does not necessarily mean causality. Therefore, Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) admit two possible interpretations of their nding. One (causal) interpretation assumes conscious mediation in the production of the straight priming eect: without consciously initiated action it is impossible to overcome the self-inhibitory mechanisms. According to the second, the observed relationship is a consequence of an underlying process which aects both conscious awareness and the priming eect. In the present study, I would like to gain more insight into the question of direct mediation of conscious awareness in production of straight priming. To this aim, Eimer and Schlagheckens (1998) original experiment was replicated with the following modications. First, no mask was displayed. This made the prime fully accessible to conscious awareness. Second, 80% of trials were incompatible and participants were informed about this situation in advance. They were encouraged to use this information to prepare an optimal strategy, namely, to prepare the hand on the side opposite to the side pointed to by the priming arrow. In other words, they were encouraged not to follow the cue provided by the prime because this cue is usually misleading (i.e. usually indicates the wrong direction). According to the Eimer and Schlagheckens (2002) causal interpretation, participants willing to maintain intentional action induced by the prime, should try to overcome selfinitiated inhibitory processes when they can see the prime. If the number of incompatible trials is prevalent, however, participants should allow the inhibitory process because it favors the response most likely required subsequently. This in turn should speed up responses in incompatible relative to compatible trials. Therefore, inverse priming is expected even though the prime is not masked. This approach was based on Merikle and Joordens (1997b) idea. They investigated the eect of prime visibility on the priming eect in a Stroop-type task where primes contained information which was compatible or incompatible with the target. In one condition, primes were only briey presented (33 ms) and replaced by a 267-ms long mask. The mask was in turn replaced by the target. In the other condition, the prime lasted 300 ms and was followed by the target, making primes content available to awareness. In both conditions, primes were incompatible in 75% of trials. Only when primes were unavailable to awareness a typical Stroop eect occurred (i.e. responses were faster in the compatible than in the incompatible trials). The reversed eect was found in the above threshold condition, because in this condition participants apparently had the possibility to capitalize on the predictive information provided by the primes (Merikle & Joordens, 1997b, p. 220). Accordingly, in the present paper it was tested if this process might be responsible for straight priming as observed under the inecient masking condition. However, some previous results suggest that a crucial factor determining if the Stroop eect occurs under nonmasking condition is time between prime and target. Indeed, Daza, Ortells, and Fox (2002) showed that

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with short primetarget intervals (100300 ms) the strategically controlled reversal did not occur even under nonmasking condition. This suggests that participants did not capitalize on the primes because they had not enough time to process the information they provided. Similar results were obtained in a primed lexical decision task (e.g. De Groot, 1984; Fuentes & Tudela, 1992). Therefore, this casts doubt on the causal interpretation. There are, however, at least two reasons leading to question the generality of these results. First, the processes underlying semantic priming and Stroop eect, which both need word recognition, seem to be definitely dierent from those involved in priming by simple shapes like arrows. Semantic priming is due to spreading activation within semantic (lexical) memory, giving way over time to slower, more deliberate processing (e.g. Neely, 1977). This likely implies dierent dynamics of these types of priming. Second, even for one type of priming the dynamics could depend on the stimuli. Recently, Jaskowski and Slosarek (2007) underscored the fact that in almost all experiments devoted to the inverse priming arrows were used as prime and targets. Still these shapes are likely processed in a privileged way (e.g. Ristic & Kingstone, 2006). Indeed, when comparing priming using dierent shapes they showed that, albeit inverse priming occurred for all of the shapes used, both the dynamics and the magnitude of the priming eect were dierent for arrows and nonarrow shapes. Therefore, one can believe that with relatively easy task as choice response to arrows online strategic control is possible even for short intervals. 2. Experiment 1 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Eleven women and three men were tested (1932 years, M = 21.4, SD = 3.4). All were recruited from the student populations of University of Finance and Management in Warsaw. They obtained course credits for their participation. All had normal of corrected-to-normal visual acuity by self-report. 2.1.2. Stimuli and procedure All stimuli (black gures on white background) were displayed on a 22-in. computer monitor with 120 Hz refresh rate driven by Presentation software (v. 0.71, Neurobehavioral Systems Inc.). Participants sat in an armchair in a darkened room in front of the monitor. Their task was to respond according to target identity, by pressing the Left-ctrl or the Right-ctrl key of the computer keyboard, as quickly and accurately as possible. Each trial consisted of two stimuli: a prime followed by a target. The primes and targets were similar to those used by Eimer and Schlaghecken (1998) in their Experiment 1: pairs of left- or right-pointing arrowheads subtended 2.1 2.3 deg. Primes lasted 16.7 ms. A 100- or 800-ms blank screen (except xation point) was displayed between prime oset and the target onset. The target remained on the screen until a response was made. Inter-trial interval was equal to 0.8 s. There were 500 trials in total. 80% of them (=2 intervals 200 repetitions) were compatible and 20% were incompatible (=2 intervals 50 repetitions). 2.1.3. Statistical analysis Responses with RTs shorter than 150 ms or longer than 1500 ms were discarded. Statistical analyses were carried out by using repeated-measure analyses of variance for RT and percent errors (PE) with the factors ISI and compatibility. 2.2. Results 2.2.1. Reaction times The results of all four experiments are presented in Tables 1 and 2. RTs were shorter for long than for short ISI (410 vs. 459 ms; F (1, 13) = 42.2, p < .001, g2 = .765). There was no main eect of congruency (F (1, 13) = 0.610, p = .449, g2 = .045), however, congruency and ISI interacted with one another (F (1, 13) = 74.0, p < .001, g2 = .851). As revealed by further ANOVAs performed for

 P. Jaskowski / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 7283 Table 1 Mean RTs obtained in Experiments 14 Experiment Condition ISI = 100 ms Comp. 1 2 3 4 20/80 20/80 80/20 20/80 masked 50/50 445 507 450 439 414 Incomp. 472 519 498 422 436 Di. +27 +12 +48 17 +22 ISI = 800 ms Comp. 428 441 381 387 386 Incomp. 392 415 451 382 388

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Di. 36 26 +70 5 +2

The means were approximated to the nearest milliseconds. di. means RT (incompatible) RT (compatible).

Table 2 Mean percent errors (PE) obtained in Experiments 14 Experiment Condition ISI = 100 ms Comp. 1 2 3 4 20/80 20/80 80/20 20/80 masked 50/50 1.9 2.6 0.8 5.6 0.8 Incomp. 4.0 6.5 5.5 1.3 2.5 Di. +2.1 +3.9 +4.7 4.3 +1.7 ISI = 800 ms Comp. 7.1 19.7 1.6 3.6 2.2 Incomp. 5.7 4.0 11.6 3.1 2.4 Di. 1.4 15.7 +10.0 0.5 +0.2

di. means PE (incompatible) PE (compatible).

the two ISIs separately, the interaction was because RTs for compatible trials were shorter than those for incompatible trials for the short ISI (445 vs. 472 ms; F (1, 13) = 13.8; p = .003, g2 = .515), and vice versa for the long ISI (428 vs. 392 ms, F (1, 13) = 35.6; p < .001, g2 = .733). 2.2.2. Percent errors Responses were slightly more accurate for short than for long ISI (4.0 vs. 4.8%; F (1, 13) = 4.1, p < .063, g2 = .241). No eect of compatibility was found (F (1, 13) = 0.022 < 1, g2 = .002). The eect of compatibility, however, depended on ISI (F (1, 13) = 8.25; p = .012, g2 = .394). For the short ISI, participants responded more accurately in compatible than in incompatible trials (1.9 vs. 4.0%, F (1, 13) = 8.2; p = .013, g2 = .388) while no dierences was found the long ISI (7.1 vs. 5.7%, F (1, 13) = 2.8, p = .122, g2 = .173). 2.3. Discussion Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) demonstrated that inverse priming occurred when primes were masked eciently and straight priming occurred when masking was ineective. According to their causal interpretation, straight priming appeared because once primes were identiable in a fraction of trials participants were able to consciously control their reactions and tried to overcome the self-initiated inhibition of the ongoing prime-triggered action. In other words, when the prime was consciously registered the inhibitory processes, which were assumed to follow prime-induced activation, were stopped. The problem as to whether the information about prime leaking through the mask can aect priming and in which way this process occurs is currently debated (Lleras & Enns, 2004; Verleger et al., 2004). A natural approach to the problem of conscious contribution to priming seems to be the manipulation of mask eciency as Eimer and Schlaghecken did. However, the issue whether or not a mask eliminates all conscious information is still very controversial (cf. Schmidt & Vorberg, 2006). As Jaskowski (in press) argued, changing mask eciency entails changes of other variables (e.g. mask structure or temporal relationships between the stimuli) which can potentially be relevant for priming. In the present study, a dierent approach was adopted where no mask was used, thus the primes were fully accessible for consciousness. However, in 80% of trials the primes invalidly cued the response hand. Therefore, if conscious awareness has online access to the ongoing motor activity, people should likely be able not only to counteract the self-inhibition but also to allow the self-inhibitory processes to continue. If it is the

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case, priming should be inverse like in Merkile and Joordans experiments. The present results showed, however, that it indeed was inverse but only if ISI was suciently long. When ISI was as short as 100 ms, which is typical of experiments showing inverse priming, straight priming was noted instead. In other words (i) participants were able to use the information provided by the prime to prepare the response opposite to that cued by the prime or, alternatively, the prime automatically activated a response related to the prime content, which is subsequently cancelled and replaced by the response on the opposite side; (ii) this was, however, successful only if participants had enough time. This nding, therefore, is inconsistent with Eimer and Schlaghecken causal hypothesis: even though participants were fully aware of the prime identity they were not able to stop automatic responding to it when the imperative stimulus appeared shortly after the prime. 3. Experiment 2 The participants task to respond to an arrow which was preceded by another arrow appeared to be very dicult and some participants complained about this. One reason might be related to the fact that the prime and the target were presented at the same place. This might have engendered confusion so that participants were not able to distinguish to which arrow they had to respond. Therefore, I repeated Experiment 1 with presenting primes and targets at dierent locations. More specically, the prime was presented at xation and two identical targets were presented peripherally, one to the left and one to the right from xation. Moreover, I added one more condition to shed more light on the possible intentional contribution to the priming. The results of Experiment 1 might suggest that for the short ISI participants cannot help but follow the prime hint. Only if ISI was longer they could stop the prime-induced preparation and start to prepare the alternative response. However, this appears to contradict our recent ndings (Jaskowski, Skalska, & Verleger, 2003). In that study, the target was preceded by a whole series of unidentiable primes. Although these series primed strongly, their eect depended on the frequency with which they provided information conicting to the visible target even though the primetarget interval was around 100 ms like in Experiment 1 of the present study. More specically, when 80% of the trials were compatible the eect was much larger than when only 20% trials were compatible. Thus, this indicated that eects of subliminal priming are under observers strategic control, with the criterion presumably set as a function of the openly observable error frequency or response speed. Therefore, one can expect a similar eect in case of supraliminal primes: although participants are apparently not able to online reprogram their motor behavior when ISI is short, they should be able to reduce the detrimental eect of the primes. To test this, the priming eect was examined also with 20% incompatible and 80% compatible trials. 3.1. Method 3.1.1. Participants A fresh sample of 12 women and 1 man was tested (2030 years). All of them were recruited from the student population of University of Finance and Management in Warsaw. They obtained course credits for their participation. All had normal of corrected-to-normal visual acuity by self-report. 3.1.2. Stimuli and procedure The same shapes as in Experiment 1 were used with this exception that the prime was displayed at xation while the target consisting of two identical double arrows was presented peripherally (i.e. one arrow 2.5 deg to the left and the other 2.5 deg to the right). Participants were asked to respond to the target and ignore the prime while keeping their gaze at xation. Each session was divided into two parts which were identical in all respects except the frequency of the compatible trials. In one part (20/80), 20% trials were compatible while in the other (80/20) 80% trials were compatible. The participants were informed about the frequency of compatible trials and encouraged to use this information to improve their speed and response accuracy. There were 400 trials in each part: 320 trials (= 2 intervals 160 repetitions) of compatible/incompatible trials and 80 (=2 repetition 40 repetitions) in the incompatible/compatible trials. The order of the parts was counterbalanced across participants.

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All other details were identical as in Experiment 1. 3.2. Statistical analysis As in Experiment 1, responses with RTs shorter than 150 ms or longer than 1500 ms were discarded. Statistical analyses were carried out by using repeated-measure analyses of variance for RT and PE with three between-subject factors: ISI, compatibility, and relative number of compatible trials. 3.3. Results 3.3.1. Reaction times Participants responses were faster in the compatible than in the incompatible trials (445 vs. 471 ms, F (1, 12) = 33.4, p < .001, g2 = .736) and in the trials with long than with short ISI (422 vs. 494 ms, F(1, 12) = 41.8, p < .001, g2 = .777). The frequency of compatible trials did not aect RTs (F(1, 12) < 1.2, p = .303, g2 = .088). In addition the interaction between the frequency and ISI was not signicant (F(1, 12) = 1.0, p = .336, g2 = .077). The compatibility eect [i.e. RT (incompatible) RT (compatible)] depended on the frequency of compatible trials being more positive when the compatible trials were more frequent than when incompatible trials were more frequent, (+59 vs. 7 ms, F (1, 12) = 31.1, p < .001, g2 = .722). Moreover, the compatibility eects dierently depended on ISI for the two frequencies, as indicated by a signicant frequency compatibility ISI triple interaction (F (1, 12) = 10.6, p = .007, g2 = .468). To explain this interaction, further ANOVAs were performed. The compatibility ISI interaction was signicant if 80% trials were incompatible (F (1, 12) = 10.7, p = .009, g2 = .447). The compatibility eect was close to zero for short ISI (+12 ms, F (1, 12) = 2.1, p = .174, g2 = .148) and negative for long ISI (26 ms, F (1, 12) = 4.9, p = .046, g2 = .292). When the compatible trials prevailed, the compatibility ISI interaction was only marginally signicant (F (1, 12) = 3.6, p = .080, g2 = .233) reecting the smaller compatibility eect for short (+48 ms) than long (+70 ms) ISI. In both cases, the eect was positive (F (1, 12) = 28.9, p < .001, g2 = .707 for ISI = 100 ms; F (1, 12) = 67.6, p < .001, g2 = .849 for ISI = 800 ms). 3.3.2. Percent errors PEs were independent of the relative number of compatible trials (F (1, 12) = 1.4, p = .266, g2 = .102) and of compatibility (F (1, 12) < 1). Participants were less accurate for long than short ISI (3.9 vs. 9.3%, F (1, 12) = 9.4, p = .010, g2 = .441). However, the increase of PE with ISI was smaller (from 3.2 to 6.7%) in the 80/20 part (more frequent compatible trials) than in the 20/80 part (from 5.6 to 11.9%; F (1, 12) = 5.0, p = .045, g2 = .295). The compatibility eect, that is PE (incompatible) PE (compatible), was larger in the 80/20 part than in the 20/80 part (+7.3 vs. 5.8%, F (1, 12) = 8.6, p = .013, g2 = .416). The frequency compatibility ISI interaction also reached signicance (F (1, 12) = 7.3, p = .019, g2 = .378). An additional ANOVAs revealed that the compatibility eect was positive (F(1, 12) = 11.9, p = .005, g2 = .498), and independent of ISI in the 80/20 part (F (1, 12) = 3.3, p = .094, g2 = .216). When the incompatible trials were more frequent than the compatible trials (20/80), the compatibility eect was dierent for the two ISIs (F (1, 12) = 6.2, p = .028, g2 = .341). For short ISI, the compatibility eect was insignicant (+3.9%, F (1, 12) < 1), while for long ISI, it was negative (15.7%, F (1, 12) = 8.5, p = .013, g2 = .414). 3.4. Comparison of Experiments 1 and 2 To answer the question as to whether the spatial separation of primes and targets aected the priming eect, the results obtained in Experiment 1 were compared with those obtained in the 20/80 part of Experiment 2. No dierences between RTs obtained in the two experiments were found (F (1, 25) = 1.7, p = .206, g2 = .063). In addition experiment did not interact with the other variables (F (1, 25) 6 2.8, p P .107, g2 6 .101).

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Similarly, there were no general dierences between the response accuracy in the two experiments (F (1, 25) = 1.8, p = .194, g2 = .067). However, the priming eects were dierent (F (1, 25) = 4.6, p = .041, g2 = .156): there was no priming eect in Experiment 1 (0.1%) and a negative eect was observed in Experiment 2 (5.8%). The triple experiment compatibility ISI interaction was marginally signicant (F (1, 25) = 3.8, p = .062, g2 = .133) indicating that in Experiment 1 the change of the priming eect caused by the lengthening of the ISI was slightly larger than that in Experiment 2. 3.5. Discussion The aim of Experiment 2 was twofold. First, it was tested if the participants inability to intentionally reverse the priming eect for the short ISI could be generalized for a situation where the prime and target were spatially separated. Although the results slightly diered (mostly in terms of response accuracy), the general pattern of results remained intact: people were not able to overcome their response tendency triggered by the prime when the target was displayed shortly after the prime. Second, the results obtained in a situation where participants responses were mostly wrongly cued by the prime were compared with those obtained in a situation where participants responses were mostly properly cued. This comparison was carried out to assess whether the priming eect was subject to any strategic control for short ISIs. A large positive priming eect was found for long ISI under 80%-compatible condition and a clearly negative priming eect was noted for long ISI under 20%-compatible condition. A dierence in the priming eect was also found for the short ISI. However, neither in 80/20 part, nor in 20/80 part inverse priming was noted. The priming eect was larger under 80%-compatible condition than 20%-compatible condition suggesting that generally people were able to reduce the impact of the primes providing mostly wrong hints and allow them to act when the primes provide useful information which could improve participants performance. This nding is fully consistent with our previous results (Jaskowski et al., 2003). 4. Experiment 3 It was claimed relying of the results of Experiments 1 and 2 that participants are able to use information carried by the prime to change online their preparation provided that the prime is accessible to conscious awareness and they have enough time for this. If this claim is true, inverse priming for long ISIs should disappear when conscious access to the priming information is limited. This prediction is tested in Experiment 3. 4.1. Participants Seventeen women and one man participated in the Experiment 3 (1922 years). All of them were recruited from the student population of University of Finance and Management in Warsaw. They obtained course credits for their participation. All had normal of corrected-to-normal visual acuity by self-report. 4.2. Stimuli and procedure Stimuli and procedure were identical as in Experiment 2. The only dierence was that the mask was presented directly after the prime. The mask was formed from the two double arrows superimposed on one another and lasted 100 ms. The participants were informed about the frequency of compatible trials. Four hundred trials were displayed: 80% of them (320 = 2 intervals 160 repetition) were compatible and 20% (80 = 2 intervals 40 repetitions) were incompatible. After RT block, visibility of the prime was checked. To this aim, only primes and masks were displayed. Participants task was to guess which of the two possible primes preceded the mask. They used the same keys as in the RT part to communicate their choices. In this part, 80 trials (2 primes 40 repetitions) were presented.

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4.3. Statistical analysis Responses with RTs shorter than 150 ms or longer than 1500 ms were discarded. Statistical analyses were carried out by using repeated-measure analyses of variance for RT and PE with three between-subject factors: ISI and compatibility. From data obtained in prime-identication block, d 0 was calculated. The t-test was used to estimate its signicance. 4.4. Results Mean d 0 was equal to 0.01 and did not dier from zero (t (17) = 0.856, p = .404). Mean RTs were shorter for the incompatible than compatible trials (403 vs. 414 ms, F (1, 17) = 7.7, p = .013, g2 = .311) and for the long than short ISI (384 vs. 431 ms, F (1, 17) = 34.0, p < .001, g2 = .667). The interaction of the two variables was signicant (F (1, 17) = 5.1, p = .036, g2 = .233). Additional ANOVAs performed separately for the two ISIs revealed that the priming eect was negative for ISI = 100 ms (17 ms, F (1, 17) = 16.0, p = .001) and none for ISI = 800 ms (F (1, 17) = 0.897, p = .357, g2 = .050). Participants made less errors for the incompatible than compatible trials (2.2 vs. 4.6%, F (1, 17) = 12.5, p = .003, g2 = .424). ISI did not aect response accuracy (3.4 vs. 3.4%, F (1, 17) = 0.006, p = .937, g2 = .000). The interaction of the two variables was signicant (F (1, 17) = 9.3, p = .007, g2 = .353). The priming eect was inverse for ISI = 100 ms (4.3%, F (1, 17) = 14.3, p = .002, g2 = .456). No priming was found for ISI = 800 ms (0.5%, F (1, 17) = 0.578, p = .457, g2 = .033). 4.5. Discussion Insertion of the mask changed the situation remarkably. First, the priming eect was inverse for the short ISI in accordance with previous ndings (e.g. Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998). Second, the eect disappeared for the longer ISI. The latter nding is consistent with my prediction: response preparation initiated by the prime vanished with time when it is neither augmented nor damped by an online strategic control. 5. Experiment 4 In Experiment 4, I tried to examine if inverse priming for the long ISI was in fact strategic in nature. I reasoned that if the prime provided no useful hints as to which target would appear, people would not try to start online preparation of the response cued by the prime. To this aim, the 50/50 strategy was used (i.e 50% compatible and 50% incompatible trials). I predicted straight priming for the short ISI and no priming at all for the long ISI because the prime-induced activation should expire after 800 ms as under masking condition (Experiment 3). 5.1. Method 5.1.1. Participants Eighteen women and one man participated in the Experiment 4 (1922 years). All of them were recruited from the student population of University of Finance and Management in Warsaw. They obtained course credits for their participation. All had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity by self-report. 5.1.2. Stimuli and procedure Stimuli and procedure was identical as in Experiment 2. The only dierence was that there was only one block of stimuli in which number of compatible and incompatible trials was the same (50/50 strategy). The participants were informed about the frequency of compatible trials. There were 240 trials (=2 intervals 2 compatibilities 60 repetitions).

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5.2. Statistical analysis Responses with RTs shorter than 150 ms or longer than 1500 ms were discarded. Statistical analyses were carried out by using repeated-measure analyses of variance for RT and PE with three between-subject factors: ISI and compatibility. 5.3. Results Mean RTs were shorter for the compatible than incompatible trials (400.5 vs. 412.3 ms, F (1, 18) = 10.6, p = .004, g2 = .372) and for the long than short ISI (387 vs. 425 ms, F (1, 18) = 26.2, p < .001, g2 = .594). The interaction of the two variables was also signicant (F (1, 18) = 13.2, p = .002, g2 = .423). It was because priming eect was positive for ISI = 100 ms (+22 ms, F (1, 18) = 19.2, p < .001) and none for ISI = 800 ms (F (1, 18) = 0.094, p = .763, g2 = .005). Neither compatibility (F (1, 18) = 3.3, p = .088, g2 = .153) nor ISI (F (1, 18) = 3.3, p = .088, g2 = .153) aected PEs. The interaction was marginally signicant (F (1, 18) = 3.9, p = .062, g2 = .180) showing the same tendencies as RTs, that is, priming eect was positive for the short ISI (+1.7%, F (1, 18) = 5.1, p = .035, g2 = .223) and none for the long ISI (+0.2%, F (1, 18) = 0.1, p = .747, g2 = .006). 5.4. Discussion Results of Experiment 3 were fully consistent with our predictions: the priming eect was positive for the short ISI and none for the long ISI. In other words, no inverse priming appeared once the cue provided by the prime did not carry useful information about the target. It was predicted that under such condition the strategy to prepare the response opposite to that cued by the prime was senseless. This nding corroborates my claim that the negative priming eect for long ISI was due to the conscious online control of the performance. 6. General discussion The main aim of the present study was to shed more light on the relation between the priming eect and the visibility of the prime. Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) showed that the priming eect was negative for d 0 = 0 and positive for d 0 > 0. One interpretation of that nding they proposed was that conscious awareness of the prime is necessary to overcome self-inhibition which automatically replaced prime-triggered motor activation. This suggests a kind of intentionally initiated action. In the present paper, it was attempted to test if the positive priming eect observed with relatively ineective masking can results from intentionally initiated action aimed to surmount the self-inhibition. To do so, I performed two experiments in which the primes were left unmasked to ensure full conscious access to the information carried by them. Under such conditions, straight priming should be expected as participants try to surmount the self-inhibition to maintain the intentional action. However, in the present experiments the frequency of incompatible trials was remarkably increased thereby the primes usually wrongly cued participants responses. This should have led to a change in participants strategy: to avoid too many wrong responses, participants should have allowed the self-inhibition to act rather than to try to overcome it. This should have resulted, in turn, in inverse priming. Indeed, inverse priming was found but only when the interval between the prime and the target was long enough. When the interval was as short as in typical priming experiment straight priming was noted. Therefore, it may be concluded that to capitalize on the information provided by the prime, not only the primes have to be available to awareness but also the primetarget interval should be long enough. This claim is consistent with the view coming from other studies that consciously initiated action is too slow to aect rapid ongoing action (e.g. Goodale, Westwood, & Milner, 2004; Pisella et al., 2000; Pisella & Rossetti, 2000). Moreover, such online modication of ongoing action is possible only if participants hoped to benet from using priming information: once the prime provided no useful information about the following target, no reversal of the priming eect was found. Since in Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) experiments the 50/50 strategy was used, it is quite unlikely that participants attempted to maintain intentional action by trying to overcome the self-inhibition even if primes were visible in a fraction of trials. In my view, this casts doubt on the idea that the prime-trig-

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gered action is modied online by consciousness. However, one should note that the present results only suggest that conscious inhibition of automatically triggered response is not fast enough to aect responses at short primetarget ISIs. It can be objected that this does not necessarily hold for conscious inhibition of automatically triggered self-inhibition, although such an assumption is plausible. One alternative explanation of the present results implies that consciousness merely slows down the normal sequence of priming-events. It follows that an unconscious (masked) prime would initially induce motor facilitation in the primed direction and would be quickly followed by inhibition (such that 100 ms after the prime, inverse priming occurs). However, a conscious prime might trigger the same processes, albeit with a slower time-course. This would mean that with primetarget interval of 100 ms, the priming eect is still positive and only after a longer time it becomes inverse. However, it was shown that there was no priming at the long delay under the 50/50 condition while it was inverse under the (conscious) 20/80 condition. Thus, for the previous account to hold we have to assume that under the 50/50 condition inverse priming occurs at even longer primetarget interval than under the 20/80 condition. Therefore, this would mean that the whole dynamics may not only be dependent on primes conscious accessibility but also on frequency of compatible and incompatible trials. This possibility remarkably complicates this account: it is dicult to explain why increasing the relative number of incompatible trials should fasten the inhibitory phase. Thus, while this account is possible, it seems to be implausible. How can the Eimer and Schlagheckens ndings be accounted for without the assumption on awareness mediation? First, this assumption seems to be unnecessary for the Schlaghecken and Eimers hypothesis. In fact, Schlaghecken and Eimer in their other writing (Bowman, Schlaghecken, & Eimer, 2006; Schlaghecken & Eimer, 2002) deftly avoided it. They assumed rather that it is not prime visibility what matters but sensory input which, if too strong, prevents the self-inhibition from developing. This means that the relation between conscious awareness of the prime and the magnitude and sign of the priming eect does not mean causality but rather that both depend on sensory input. Second, other hypotheses proposed to explain inverse priming (Jaskowski & Przekoracka-Krawczyk, 2005; Jaskowski, in press; Lleras & Enns, 2004, 2006a; Verleger et al., 2004) assume that it is the mask that triggers the inhibitory processes or/and initiates preparation of the alternative response. Mask eect is assumed to depend on the mask structure: the mask-induced action is stronger if it shares features with the prime and the target. This is probably why with a less ecient mask straight priming occurs. Indeed, Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) manipulated mask eciency by varying the number of line elements that constituted the mask. When the mask contained only few lines, leaving the primes visible, priming was straight. As (Lleras & Enns, 2006a; Lleras & Enns, 2006b) underscored, inverse priming was achieved in Eimer and Schlaghecken (2002) study once the mask had more than 5 elements and its magnitude actually increased slightly with further increase of the number of elements. These results are therefore consistent with the mask hypotheses: if the mask is composed of intersecting slanted lines resembling arrows, they form task relevant features which interact with the prime and produce inverse priming. Automatic responding to a prime that is similar or identical to a target is partially under intentional control in the sense that what is the target and how participants should respond to it is determined by participants intentions. According to Neumanns theory of direct parameter specication (Ansorge, Heumann, & Scharlau, 2002; Klotz & Neumann, 1999; Neumann & Klotz, 1994), this intention is introduced at the beginning of the task by setting some free parameters in the motor program. The present results showed, consistently with our previous nding (Jaskowski et al., 2003), that even if the primetarget distance is very short participants try to prevent from making too many errors, likely by regulating both perceptual anal ysis and motor selection (Jaskowski et al., 2003; Wolbers et al., 2006). This strategic control, however, seems to be strongly limited. The fact that priming remained straight for the short primetarget interval suggests that participants were not able to run a visuomotor program where the preceding stimulus has to be interpreted according to the one rule while the following stimulus has to be interpreted according to the other rule even though such an intention could be formulated in advance. In other words, if the rule is respond with left/right hand to the left/right pointing arrow participants are not able to prepare with left/right hand to the right/left pointing priming arrow and respond with left/right hand to the left/right pointing target arrow.

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Acknowledgments I wish to thank Simone Dalla Bella and Blandyna Skalska for their helpful suggestions regarding the earlier ska and Monika Tomanek for their technical assistance. This versions of the manuscript and Anita Biatun study was supported by a Grant H01F 090 30 from Polish Committee for Scientic Research. References
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