Interaction of prime and target in the subliminal affective priming effect

It has been found that an emotional stimulus such as a facial expression presented subliminally can affect subsequent information processing and behavior, usually by shifting evaluation of a subsequent stimulus to a valence congruent with the previous stimulus. This phenomenon is called subliminal affective priming. The present study was conducted to replicate and expand previous findings by investigating interaction of primes and targets in the affective priming effect. Two conditions were used. Prime (subliminal presentation 35 msec.) of an angry face of a woman and a No Prime control condition. Just after presentation of the prime, an ambiguous angry face or an emotionally neutral face was presented above the threshold of awareness (500 msec.). 12 female undergraduate women judged categories of facial expressions (Anger, Neutral, or Happiness) for the target faces. Analysis indicated that the Anger primes significantly facilitated judgment of anger for the ambiguous angry faces; however, the priming effect of the Anger primes was not observed for neutral faces. Consequently, the present finding suggested that a subliminal affective priming effect should be more prominent when affective valence of primes and targets is congruent.     

Spontaneous eye blinks during creative task correlate with divergent processing

Creativity consists of divergent and convergent thinking, with both related to individual eye blinks at rest. To assess underlying mechanisms between eye blinks and traditional creativity tasks, we investigated the relationship between creativity performance and eye blinks at rest and during tasks. Participants performed an alternative uses and remote association task while eye blinks were recorded. Results showed that the relationship between eye blinks at rest and creativity performance was compatible with those of previous research. Interestingly, we found that the generation of ideas increased as a function of eye blink number during the alternative uses task. On the other hand, during the remote association task, accuracy was independent of eye blink number during the task, but response time increased with it. Moreover, eye blink changes in participants who responded quickly during the remote association task were different depending on their resting state eye blinks; that is, participants with many eye blinks during rest showed little increasing eye blinks and achieved solutions quickly. Positive correlations between eye blinks during creative tasks and yielding ideas on the alternative uses task and response time on the remote association task suggest that eye blinks during creativity tasks relate to divergent thinking processes such as conceptual reorganization.