Does memory priming during anesthesia matter?

This editorial argues that there is evidence for memory priming during adequate anaesthesia, and that research in the field of social cognition suggests that such priming may have important behavioural consequences. Comments made in the operating room about a patient's prognosis, appearance or state of consciousness could exacerbate their existing anxieties about the operation, themselves or the anaesthetic and may contribute to postoperative anxiety, depression and insomnia

Psychotherapy Augmentation through Preconscious Priming.

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that repeated preconscious (masked) priming of personalized positive cognitions could augment cognitive change and facilitate achievement of patients' goals following a therapy. METHODS: Twenty social phobic patients (13 women) completed a 36-weeks study beginning by 12 weeks of group behavioral therapy. After the therapy, they received 6 weeks of preconscious priming and 6 weeks of a control procedure in a randomized cross-over design. The Priming condition involved listening twice daily with a passive attitude to a recording of individualized formulations of appropriate cognitions and attitudes masked by music. The Control condition involved listening to an indistinguishable recording where the formulations had been replaced by random numbers. Changes in social cognitions were measured by the Social Interaction Self Statements Test (SISST). RESULTS: Patients improved following therapy. The Priming procedure was associated with increased positive cognitions and decreased negative cognitions on the SISST while the Control procedure was not. The Priming procedure induced more cognitive change when applied immediately after the group therapy. CONCLUSION: An effect of priming was observed on social phobia related cognitions in the expected direction. This self administered addition to a therapy could be seen as an augmentation strategy

Normal mere exposure effect with impaired recognition in Alzheimer’s disease.

We investigated the mere exposure effect and the explicit memory in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and elderly control subjects, using unfamiliar faces. During the exposure phase, the subjects estimated the age of briefly flashed faces. The mere exposure effect was examined by presenting pairs of faces (old and new) and asking participants to select the face they liked. The participants were then presented with a forced-choice explicit recognition task. Controls subjects exhibited above-chance preference and recognition scores for old faces. The AD patients also showed the mere exposure effect but no explicit recognition. These results suggest that the processes involved in the mere exposure effect are preserved in AD patients despite their impaired explicit recognition. The results are discussed in terms of Seamon et al.’s proposal (1995) that processes involved in the mere exposure effect are equivalent to those subserving perceptual priming. These processes would depend on extrastriate areas which are relatively preserved in AD patients

The influence of affect on attitude

Priests of the medieval Catholic Church understood something about the relationship between affect and attitude. To instill the proper attitude in parishioners, priests dramatized the power of liturgy to save them from Hell in a service in which the experience of darkness and fear gave way to light and familiar liturgy. These ceremonies “were written and performed so as to first arouse and then allay anxieties and fears ” (Scott, 2003, p. 227): The service usually began in the dark of night with the gothic cathedral’s nave filled with worship-pers cast into total darkness. Terrifying noises, wailing, shrieks, screams, and clanging of metal mimicked the chaos of hell, giving frightened witnesses a taste of what they could expect if they were tempted to stray. After a prolonged period of this imitation of hell, the cathedral’s interior gradually became filled with the blaze of a thousand lights. As the gloom diminished, cacophony was supplanted by the measured tones of Gregorian chants and polyphony. Light and divine order replaced darkness and chaos (R. Scott, personal correspondence, March 15, 2004). This ceremony was designed to buttress beliefs by experience and to transfigure abstractions into attitudes. In place of merely hearing about “the chaos and perdition of hell that regular performances of liturgy were designed to hold in check ” (Scott, 2003), parishioners shoul

Exploring the effect of subliminal single-word and multiple-word primes on working memory performance

This PhD thesis focused on subliminal priming, that is, the presentation of information below conscious awareness (Vernon, 2009), which has been shown to influence both cognitive and affective behaviours. Information can be presented subliminally using both ‘Single-Word’ and ‘Multiple-Word’ written primes, although the two prime types have not yet been compared. Currently there is no reported optimal procedure for the presentation of subliminal stimuli, thus such a comparison could guide future research concerning prime choice. Hence, this thesis empirically compared the effects produced by Single-Word and Multiple-Word primes in a series of experiments. In Experiment 1 96 participants were subliminally stimulated with one of six alternative primes, three Single-Word primes (cognitive: intelligent; affective: one; neutral-control: walking), and three Multiple-Word primes (cognitive: I am intelligent; affective: mommy and I are one; neutral-control: people are walking), and their performance measured on a range of cognitive (e.g., working memory, intelligence, selective attention) andaffective (e.g., mood and state anxiety) tasks. Results of Experiment 1 showed no clear change in participants’ intelligence, selective attention, mood, or state anxiety. However, post hoc analysis found participants’ significantly improved their working memory performance following exposure to all positive (e.g., cognitive and affective) subliminal primes, regardless of prime type (i.e., Single-Word and Multiple-Word). Experiment 2 followed this up by exploring the effect of subliminal priming on working memory performance. Sixty participants were primed with one of the six subliminal stimuli to assess whether the non-differential effect between prime types found in Experiment 1 was due to the varied length of time between the end of subliminal exposure and the onset of the task. Results found all participants’ performance improved regardless of prime type and prime content and thus was concluded to reflect a practice effect. Experiment 3 considered that the absence of any subliminal priming may have been due to participants’ potential lack of motivation to attain the goal of improving working memory. Hence, 106 participants were primed with one of the six subliminal stimuli and their motivation to achieve this goal was enhanced using falsepositive feedback on performance and reading a false article extract highlighting the benefit of a good working memory. Results found, despite increased motivation to improve working memory, that subliminal priming did not have any effect on performance. Experiment 4 considered whether the specific content of the subliminal stimuli, the short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), or the type of task could be accountable for the null results. Thus, in addition to enhancing participant motivation, the content of the stimuli were refined to become more task-relevant, the prime-target SOA was extended from 14ms to 514ms to allow more time for unconscious processing. Eighty-three participants were primed with one of four subliminal stimuli; two Single-Word primes (memory-specific: remember; neutralcontrol: walking) and two Multiple-Word primes (memory-specific: I can remember well; neutral-control: people are walking), and performance was measured using two working memory tasks. Results found all participants’ performance improved on both working memory tasks regardless of prime type and prime content and was concluded to reflect a practice effect. Finally, a meta-analysis conducted on the data from the Conceptual Span Task from all four experiments confirmed an improvement on performance over time but no evidence of any subliminal priming effects. Overall, this thesis found it was not possible to establish a difference between the two prime types, although findings indicate that subliminal priming may not be able to improve performance of the phonological loop component of working memory

Subliminal perception and music : a brief survey

"Conditioning is either teaching or forcing one to feel or think a certain way when given a decision. [He[ is therefore forced to feel and think negative responses when shown evil sites or thoughts. This matches exactly, in my view, what is the main goal of the so-called subliminal perception. Subliminal literally means 'beneath the threshold of conscious awareness.'

Non-conscious Effects of Marketing Communication and Implicit Attitude Change: State of Research and New Perspectives

International audienceThe article shows that many psychological effects of the marketing communication, sometimes called "non-conscious effects", really produce implicit attitude changes. We show that the theoretical and methodological framework of implicit attitude is well adapted to study these effects and to open new perspectives to study the persuasion in a marketing communication context. On the basis of research conducted within advertising contexts, product placement and TV sponsorship, four types of non-conscious influences are examined: a) non-conscious perception of brands, b) low-attention and forgotten exposures, c) attitude conditioning, d) brand insertion into emotional contexts. While discussing the contributions and limitations of major research methodologies, we highlight new perspectives likely to further the progress of research. We open up new perspectives first to increase the ecological and theoretical validity of methodologies; secondly, to improve the validity of effects measure. At a practical level, we posit that the measures of effects currently used by advertising agencies and advertisers underestimate the effects of marketing communication campaigns. A third research perspective endeavors to better understand the links between implicit and explicit attitudes on the one hand, and behavior on the other hand. The article gives some basis to the field called by some people "neuromarketing".L'article dresse d'abord une synthèse de la littérature concernant les effets non conscients de la communication-marketing (publicité à la télévision ou sur Internet, placement de produit, parrainage télévisuel...). Il explique les processus psychologiques qui sous-tendent les effets en montrant que le contexte théorique et méthodologique de la cognition implicite (attitude et mémoire implicites) est adapté pour mieux comprendre de tels effets. Quatre types d'influence non conscientes sont examinés : la perception non consciente des marques, les expositions en faible attention et aussitôt oubliées, le conditionnement des attitudes, l'insertion des marques dans des contextes émotionnels. Après avoir discuté des principales contributions et limites des méthodologies de recherche dans ce champ, nous ouvrons de nouvelles perspectives de recherche afin d'accroître les validités théoriques et écologiques des méthodologies utilisées. À un niveau pratique,il semblerait que les mesures d'efficacité actuellement utilisées par les agences de publicité et les annonceurs sous-estiment les effets réels des campagnes de communication marketing en partie non conscients. L'article intéresse également les spécialistes du "neuromarketing" (même si ce terme et sa finalité sont critiquables...)