Subliminal Semantic Priming in Speech

Numerous studies have reported subliminal repetition and semantic priming in the visual modality. We transferred this paradigm to the auditory modality. Prime awareness was manipulated by a reduction of sound intensity level. Uncategorized prime words (according to a post-test) were followed by semantically related, unrelated, or repeated target words (presented without intensity reduction) and participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT). Participants with slower reaction times in the LDT showed semantic priming (faster reaction times for semantically related compared to unrelated targets) and negative repetition priming (slower reaction times for repeated compared to semantically related targets). This is the first report of semantic priming in the auditory modality without conscious categorization of the prime

Exploitation des fonctions cognitives chez des patients en état de coma

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Correct Reaction Times at the lexical decision task – pre-experiment.

<p>Correct Reaction Times at the lexical decision task in the pre-experiment with semantically unrelated, semantically related, and repeated word pairs in slow (N = 12) and fast responders (N = 12) (unit: milliseconds; with SEM).</p

Correct Reaction Times at the lexical decision task - priming phase of the main experiment.

<p>Correct Reaction Times at the lexical decision task in the priming phase of the main experiment with semantically unrelated, semantically related, and repeated word pairs in slow (N = 12) and fast responders (N = 12) (unit: milliseconds; with SEM).</p

Regression line of the priming between related and unrelated pairs.

<p>Regression line of the priming between related and unrelated pairs (vertical axis: correct reaction time difference between the two conditions in milliseconds) as a function of the prime awareness sensitivity <i>d′c</i> (see Methods), on the horizontal axis.</p

Regression line of the priming between related and repeated pairs.

<p>Regression line of the priming between related and repeated pairs (correct reaction time difference between the two conditions in milliseconds) as function of the prime awareness sensitivity <i>d′c</i> (see Methods), on the horizontal axis.</p

N2 grand averaged event-related potentials to long and short sentential semantic length (SSL, see Methods) (thick red and thin blue lines, respectively) and to congruent sentences (thin black lines) during N2 at anterior (F3, F4, F7, F8), central (C3, C4, T7, T8), and posterior sites of the scalp (P3, P4, P7, P8) using non degraded (DL0), mildly degraded (DL1), and highly degraded (DL3) auditory sentences (N = 15 participants, vertical unit: microvolts with negativity upward, horizontal unit: milliseconds).

<p>Thick horizontal bars indicate the latencies of significant ERP effects according to Analysis I and II: ERP to <b>L</b>ong SSL incongruent sentences minus ERP to congruent sentences (<b>L</b>) significant according to Analysis II (orange) and to Analysis I & II (green); ERP to <b>S</b>hort SSL incongruent sentences minus ERP to congruent sentences (<b>S</b>) significant according to Analysis II (light blue) and to Analysis I & II (gray); ERP to long SSL incongruent sentences minus ERP to short SSL incongruent sentences (<b>SSL</b>) significant according to Analysis II (light purple) and to Analysis I & II (dark purple).</p

Significant ERP effects according to the post hoc tests of Analysis I.

<p>Note: Significant ERP effects according to the post hoc tests of Analysis I (<i>p</i><.05) in microV with their topography in parenthesis to the presentation of non degraded (DL0), mildly degraded (DL1), and highly degraded (DL3) auditory sentences during wake, N2, and R. A: Anterior sites (F3, F4, F7, F8), C: Central sites (C3, C4, T7, T8), P: Posterior sites (P3, P4, P7, P8), CP: Central and Posterior sites, AC: Anterior and Central sites, <i>n.s.</i>: non-significant ERP effect (<i>p</i>>.05), Lg: ERP (averaged in the above-mentioned time windows) to <b>long</b> SSL incongruent sentences minus ERP to congruent sentences, S: ERP to <b>short</b> SSL incongruent sentences minus ERP to congruent sentences, SSL: ERP to long minus short SSL incongruent sentences, W: Wake, DL independent: ERP effects independent from the DL (i.e. from an interaction that did not include the DL factor).</p