Subliminal Strengthening

Subliminal Messages

In the fall of 1982 we were contacted by a local radio announcer for information about a phenomenon he referred to as “backmasking.” However, his question did not concern the well-studied phenomenon of visual persistence (see DiLollo, 1980; Sakitt, 1976); the announcer wanted to know what were the effects on a listener of messages that allegedly had been recorded backward into popular rock musi...

Introspection and subliminal perception

Subliminal perception (SP) is today considered a well-supported theory stating that perception can occur without conscious awareness and have a significant impact on later behaviour and thought. In this article, we first present and discuss different approaches to the study of SP. In doing this, we claim that most approaches are based on a dichotomic measure of awareness. Drawing upon recent ad...

Tracing Subliminal Memory Traces

Subliminal speech priming.

We present a novel subliminal priming technique that operates in the auditory modality. Masking is achieved by hiding a spoken word within a stream of time-compressed speechlike sounds with similar spectral characteristics. Participants were unable to consciously identify the hidden words, yet reliable repetition priming was found. This effect was unaffected by a change in the speaker's voice a...

Subliminal Visual Priming

Masked pictures of objects were flashed so briefly that only 13.5% of them could be named. Forced-choice accuracy for the unidentified objects was at chance. When the pictures were shown again, about 15 min and 20 intervening trials later, without any indication of possible repetitions, naming accuracy increased to 34.5%. The priming was completely visual, rather than semantic or verbal, as the...