Using masked priming to investigate the cognitive principles that govern unconscious processing and their effect on arithmetic fact retrieval
Final Report Abstract
This project aimed at investigating the masked priming methodology and at understanding how it can be used to study numerical/mathematical cognition. Masked priming is a wellestablished method to evaluate the influence of unconscious cognitive processing on overt behavior. In this method, participants are asked to classify a visible stimulus that is preceded by an unseen prime stimulus. The visibility of the prime is usually reduced by presenting masking stimuli (e.g., “####” or a list of randomly chosen letters) before and after it. Although the masking induces a subjective lack of awareness, the prime can modulate perception and cognition and influence the participant’s decision. This project used masked priming to achieve two objectives. First, masked priming has been used to investigate the processing stages that take place during simple mental arithmetic (for example, retrieving from memory the result “3×7=?”). This method was used to test hypotheses on the way arithmetic knowledge is stored in memory. Second, masked priming has been used to test the accounts proposed to explain how unconscious processing influences overt behavior. We investigated how a masked stimulus (unconsciously processed) interferes with the participant’s decisions. The results indicate that masked priming, at least in the implementation we used, did not influence the processing of arithmetic knowledge. Moreover, we found that the models proposed to explain masked priming were not able to explain our results. This project aimed to use unconscious processing as a tool to investigate mental arithmetic. On the one hand, the paradigm we implemented was not effective, as in general, it provided unstable and weak effects. On the other hand, our data can be a useful starting point for future studies aimed at investigating mental arithmetic using masked priming. The second objective of the project was to evaluate the mechanisms proposed to explain the relationship between unconscious and conscious processing. None of the accounts we tested was well supported by our findings. Therefore, these models should be modified to take into account the fact that our results suggest that masked priming depends on multiple factors that mutually contribute to it.
Publications
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Data and code for the analysis for the manuscript: No influence of masked priming on the multiplication fact retrieval in a result verification task. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 8(1).
Didino, D.
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Color SNARC [Public repository of the experiment for the study “Didino, Brandtner, Glaser & Knops. (2023). Probing the Dual-Route Model of the SNARC Effect by Orthogonalizing Processing Speed and Depth. Experimental Psychology, 70(1)”]. Pavlovia's Project Repository
Didino, Daniele & Brandtner, Matthias
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Data and code for the analysis for the manuscript: Probing the Dual-Route Model of the SNARC Effect by Orthogonalizing Processing Speed and Depth. Experimental Psychology, 70(1).
Didino, D.
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No influence of masked priming on the multiplication fact retrieval in a result verification task. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 8(1), 202-225.
Didino, Daniele; Brandtner, Matthias & Knops, André
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Probing the Dual-Route Model of the SNARC Effect by Orthogonalizing Processing Speed and Depth. Experimental Psychology, 70(1), 1-13.
Didino, Daniele; Brandtner, Matthias; Glaser, Maria & Knops, André
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Supplementary materials (i.e., raw and processed data and the annotated R code used for the analysis) for the paper: Masked priming: multiple factors contribute to the prime-target congruency
Didino, D.
