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AVERAGE EVOKED RESPONSE AND VERBAL CORRELATES OF UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL PROCESSES
Author(s) -
Shevrin Howard,
Smith William H.,
Fitzler Dean E.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1971.tb00447.x
Subject(s) - subliminal stimuli , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , unconscious mind , audiology , perception , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , neuroscience , psychoanalysis , medicine
Two methods for identifying visual average evoked response components—one based on sequence, the other on peak amplitude—resulted in significant discriminations between subliminal visual stimuli, thus supporting and extending previous findings dealing with the investigation of unconscious mental processes. In addition, verbal effects of a subliminal stimulus, detected by a free association procedure, were found, which correlated with different AER characteristics. Verbal effects which were conceptually and veridically related to the stimulus correlated with an AER amplitude component (90–260 msec post‐stimulus), while homophonic, unveridical verbal effects were related to the incidence of alpha bursts approximately 1 1/2 sec post‐stimulus. S s were 12 pairs of twins, ranging in age from 13–22. For older S s (17–20) the sequence and peak amplitude components coincided; for younger S s (12–16), they were different. Younger S s also had significantly larger amplitudes than older S s for both subliminal and supraliminal conditions (peak amplitude method) and for the supraliminal condition (sequence method).