Right hemispheric dominance in processing of unconscious negative emotion

Right hemispheric dominance in unconscious emotional processing has been suggested, but remains controversial. This issue was investigated using the subliminal affective priming paradigm combined with unilateral visual presentation in 40 normal subjects. In either left or right visual fields, angry facial expressions, happy facial expressions, or plain gray images were briefly presented as negative, positive, and control primes, followed by a mosaic mask. Then nonsense target ideographs were presented, and the subjects evaluated their partiality toward the targets. When the stimuli were presented in the left, but not the right, visual fields, the negative primes reduced the subjects' liking for the targets, relative to the case of the positive or control primes. These results provided behavioral evidence supporting the hypothesis that the right hemisphere is dominant for unconscious negative emotional processing.     

Social influences on unconscious plagiarism and anti-plagiarism

People are more likely to unconsciously plagiarise ideas from a same-sex partner than a different-sex partner, and more likely to unconsciously plagiarise if recalling alone rather than in the presence of their partner [Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Calvini, G. (1999). Contexts of cryptomnesia: May the source be with you. Social Cognition, 17, 273–297. doi:10.1521/soco.1999.17.3.273]. Two sets of experiments explore these phenomena, using extensions of the standard unconscious plagiarism paradigm. In Experiment 1A participants worked together in same- or different-sex dyads before trying to recall their own ideas or their partner's ideas. More source errors were evident for same-sex dyads (Experiment 1A), but this effect was absent when participants recalled from both sources simultaneously (Experiment 1B). In Experiment 2A, participants recalled ideas from a single source either alone or in the presence of the partner, using an extended-recall task. Partner presence did not affect the availability of ideas, but did reduce the propensity to report them as task compliant, relative to a partner-present condition. Simultaneous recall from both sources removed this social effect (Experiment 2B). Thus social influences on unconscious plagiarism are apparent, but are influenced by the salience of the alternate source at retrieval.     

Career decision making: The limits of rationality and the abundance of non-conscious processes

The terms of work have changed, with multiple transitions now characterizing the arc of a typical career. This article examines an ongoing shift in the area of vocational decision making, as it moves from a place where “it’s all about the match” to one closer to “it’s all about adapting to change”. We review literatures on judgment and decision making, 2-system models of decisional thought, the neuroanatomy of decision making, and the role of non-conscious processes in decision making. Acknowledging the limits of rationality, and the abundance of non-conscious processes in decision making, obliges us to act in ways that mitigate the inherent difficulties to which those processes make us vulnerable. We conclude that both rational and intuitive processes seem dialectically intertwined in effective decision making, and we offer a trilateral model of career decision making that includes rational and intuitive mechanisms, both of which are funded and kept in check by occupational engagement.     

Unconscious priming according to multiple S-R rules

The present study investigated if unconscious primes can be processed according to different stimulus-response (S-R) rules simultaneously. Participants performed two different S-R rules, such as judging a digit as smaller or larger than five and judging a letter as vowel or consonant. These S-R rules were administered in random order and announced by a previously presented cue. Each target stimulus was preceded by subliminal primes which afforded a different or an identical response according to either the currently irrelevant or currently relevant S-R rule. In three experiments, we consistently found priming effects according to currently irrelevant S-R rules, even when primes for the relevant and irrelevant S-R rules were presented simultaneously. Thus, unconscious stimuli have the power to activate responses according to currently required and currently not required S-R rules concurrently. The results are in line with response activation accounts of subliminal priming and suggest that at least two routes may gain access on response processes simultaneously.     

Masked blindsight in normal observers: Measuring subjective and objective responses to two features of each stimulus

Recent visual masking studies that have measured visual awareness with graded subjective scales have often failed the show any evidence for unconscious visual processing in normal observers in a paradigm similar to that used in studies on blindsight patients. Without any reported awareness of the target, normal observers typically cannot discriminate target’s features better than chance. The present study examined processing of color and orientation by measuring graded awareness and forced-choice discriminations for both features in each trial. When no awareness for either feature was reported, discrimination of each feature succeed better than expected by chance, even when the other feature was incorrectly discriminated in the same trial. However, the characteristics of the mask determined whether or not masked blindsight was observed. We conclude that when the processing channels are free from intra-channel interference, unbound or weakly bound features can guide behaviour without any reported awareness in normal observers.     

On the alpha-function, chaotic cats, and unconscious memory

Wilfred Bion, the noted psychoanalyst, introduced the term “alpha-function” to refer to mental operations that transform raw sense data into elements of experience that can be stored as unconscious memory. The paper weaves a theoretical thread between supposedly orthogonal fields of inquiry (Bion's psychoanalysis, chaotic systems, biology, Peircean semiotics) to (a) suggest that the alpha-function may be interpreted in terms of a chaotic transformation known as “Arnold's Cat Map” and (b) present a novel conception of unconscious memory.     

Probing the influence of unconscious fear-conditioned visual stimuli on eye movements

Efficient threat detection from the environment is critical for survival. Accordingly, fear-conditioned stimuli receive prioritized processing and capture overt and covert attention. However, it is unknown whether eye movements are influenced by unconscious fear-conditioned stimuli. We performed a classical fear-conditioning procedure and subsequently recorded participants’ eye movements while they were exposed to fear-conditioned stimuli that were rendered invisible using interocular suppression. Chance-level performance in a forced-choice-task demonstrated unawareness of the stimuli. Differential skin conductance responses and a change in participants’ fearfulness ratings of the stimuli indicated the effectiveness of conditioning. However, eye movements were not biased towards the fear-conditioned stimulus. Preliminary evidence suggests a relation between the strength of conditioning and the saccadic bias to the fear-conditioned stimulus. Our findings provide no strong evidence for a saccadic bias towards unconscious fear-conditioned stimuli but tentative evidence suggests that such an effect may depend on the strength of the conditioned response.     

BICA for AGI

BICAs for AI have been happening for decades, realized within multiple cognitive architectures. What is a BICA for AGI? It requires AI to go beyond the limitations of predicative human language, and of predicative logic based on it; also, above human reportable consciousness, to the subconscious/non-conscious level of human (and machine) mind; and then still beyond it. Within machine cognition this is the sub-symbolic level. It has to gauge gestalts, or patterns, directly from the processes, which goes beyond human-level observational capacities or human-understandable language, even beyond the language of human-readable mathematics (Boltuc, 2018). It requires versatile life-long learning (Siegelmann, 2018). Through complex stochastic processes, it needs to confabulate by creative permutations of multifarious gestalts and to select those with useful applications (Thaler, 1997). This is computing at the edge of chaos (Goertzel, 2006).     

Increased response time of primed associates following an “episodic” hypnotic amnesia suggestion: A case of unconscious volition

Following a hypnotic amnesia suggestion, highly hypnotically suggestible subjects may experience amnesia for events. Is there a failure to retrieve the material concerned from autobiographical (episodic) memory, or is it retrieved but blocked from consciousness? Highly hypnotically suggestible subjects produced free-associates to a list of concrete nouns. They were then given an amnesia suggestion for that episode followed by another free association list, which included 15 critical words that had been previously presented. If episodic retrieval for the first trial had been blocked, the responses on the second trial should still have been at least as fast as for the first trial. With semantic priming, they should be faster. In fact, they were on average half a second slower. This suggests that the material had been retrieved but blocked from consciousness. A goal-oriented information processing framework is outlined to interpret these and related data.     

Memory for positive,negative and neutral events in younger and older adults: Does emotion influence binding in event memory?

When remembering an event, it is important to remember both the features of the event (e.g., a person and an action) and the connections among features (e.g., who performed which action). Emotion often enhances memory for stimulus features, but the relationship between emotion and the binding of features in memory is unclear. Younger and older adults attempted to remember events in which a person performed a negative, positive or neutral action. Memory for the action was enhanced by emotion, but emotion did not enhance the ability of participants to remember which person performed which action. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to make binding errors in which they incorrectly remembered a familiar actor performing a familiar action that had actually been performed by someone else, and this age-related associative deficit was found for both neutral and emotional actions. Emotion not only increased correct recognition of old events for older and younger adults but also increased false recognition of events in which a familiar actor performed a familiar action that had been performed by someone else. Thus, although emotion may enhance memory for the features of an event, it does not increase the accuracy of remembering who performed which action.