TY - JOUR A1 - Reuss, Heiko A1 - Pohl, Carsten A1 - Kiesel, Andrea A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Follow the sign! Top-down contingent attentional capture of masked arrow cues JF - Advances in Cognitive Psychology N2 - Arrow cues and other overlearned spatial symbols automatically orient attention according to their spatial meaning. This renders them similar to exogenous cues that occur at stimulus location. Exogenous cues trigger shifts of attention even when they are presented subliminally. Here, we investigate to what extent the mechanisms underlying the orienting of attention by exogenous cues and by arrow cues are comparable by analyzing the effects of visible and masked arrow cues on attention. In Experiment 1, we presented arrow cues with overall 50% validity. Visible cues, but not masked cues, lead to shifts of attention. In Experiment 2, the arrow cues had an overall validity of 80%. Now both visible and masked arrows lead to shifts of attention. This is in line with findings that subliminal exogenous cues capture attention only in a top-down contingent manner, that is, when the cues fit the observer’s intentions. KW - Attention KW - arrow cues KW - spatial cuing KW - masked priming KW - contingent capture Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-140030 VL - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reuss, Heiko A1 - Kiesel, Andrea A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Wühr, Peter T1 - A cue from the unconscious - masked symbols prompt spatial anticipation JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Anticipating where an event will occur enables us to instantaneously respond to events that occur at the expected location. Here we investigated if such spatial anticipations can be triggered by symbolic information that participants cannot consciously see. In two experiments involving a Posner cueing task and a visual search task, a central cue informed participants about the likely location of the next target stimulus. In half of the trials, this cue was rendered invisible by pattern masking. In both experiments, visible cues led to cueing effects, that is, faster responses after valid compared to invalid cues. Importantly, even masked cues caused cueing effects, though to a lesser extent. Additionally, we analyzed effects on attention that persist from one trial to the subsequent trial. We found that spatial anticipations are able to interfere with newly formed spatial anticipations and influence orienting of attention in the subsequent trial. When the preceding cue was visible, the corresponding spatial anticipation persisted to an extent that prevented a noticeable effect of masked cues. The effects of visible cues were likewise modulated by previous spatial anticipations, but were strong enough to also exert an impact on attention themselves. Altogether, the results suggest that spatial anticipations can be formed on the basis of unconscious stimuli, but that interfering influences like still active spatial anticipations can suppress this effect. KW - masked priming KW - unconscious processing KW - anticipation KW - endogenous shifts of attention KW - spatial cueing Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-123971 VL - 3 ER - TY - THES A1 - Reuß, Heiko T1 - The interplay of unconscious processing and cognitive control T1 - Das Zusammenspiel unbewusster Verarbeitung und kognitiver Kontrolle N2 - The aim of this study was both to investigate the influence of cognitive control on unconscious processing, and to investigate the influence of unconscious processing on cognitive control. At first, different mechanisms and accounts to explain unconscious priming are presented. Here, perceptual and motor processes, as well as stimulus-response learning, semantic categorization, and the action trigger account as theories to explain motor priming are discussed. Then, the issue of the potential limits of unconscious processing is presented. Findings that indicate that active current intentions and expertise modulate unconscious processing are illustrated. Subsequently, results that imply an influence of unconsciously presented stimuli that goes beyond motor processes are discussed, with a special focus on inhibition processes, orienting of attention, task set activation, and conflict adaptation. Then I present the results of my own empirical work. Experiment 1 shows that the effective processing of unconsciously presented stimuli depends on expertise, even when potentially confounding difference between the expert and novice groups are controlled. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 indicate that the intention to use particular stimuli is a crucial factor for the effectiveness of these stimuli when they are presented unconsciously. Additionally, these findings show that shifts of attention can be triggered by centrally presented masked arrow cues. Experiments 4 and 5 broaden these results to cue stimuli that are not inherently associated with a spatial meaning. The finding corroborate that typically endogenously controlled shifts of attention can also be induced by unconscious stimuli. Experiments 6 and 7 demonstrate that even a central cognitive control process like task set activation is not contingent on conscious awareness, but can in contrast be triggered through unconscious stimulation. Finally, these results are integrated and I discuss how the concept of cognitive control and the limits of unconscious processing may have to be reconsidered. Furthermore, potential future research possibilities in this field are presented. N2 - Das Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, sowohl den Einfluss von kognitiver Kontrolle auf unbewusste Verarbeitung, als auch den Einfluss unbewusster Verarbeitung auf kognitive Kontrolle zu untersuchen. Zunächst werden verschiedene Mechanismen und Ansätze zur Erklärung unbewusster Bahnung vorgestellt. Dabei werden perzeptuelle Prozesse sowie motorische Prozesse beleuchtet und mit Reiz-Reaktions-Verbindungen, semantischer Kategorisierung und dem Ansatz handlungsdeterminierender Reizerwartungen drei verschiedene Ansätze zur Erklärung motorischer Bahnung besprochen. Danach wird die Problematik der Grenzen unbewusster Verarbeitung dargestellt. Es werden Befunde vorgestellt, die Hinweise auf den Einfluss von aktiven Aufgabeneinstellungen sowie von Expertise auf unbewusste Verarbeitung geben. Als nächstes werden Ergebnisse besprochen, die einen über motorische Prozesse hinausgehenden Einfluss unbewusster Reize nahelegen. Dabei wird insbesondere auf den Einfluss auf Hemmprozesse, Aufmerksamkeitsausrichtung, die Aktivierung von Aufgabeneinstellungen und Konfliktadaptation eingegangen. Dann werden die Ergebnisse eigener empirischer Arbeiten vorgestellt. In Experiment 1 wurde gezeigt, dass die effektive Verarbeitung unbewusster Reize von Expertise abhängt, auch wenn sonstige Unterschiede zwischen Experten- und Novizen-Gruppen kontrolliert sind. Die Ergebnisse von Experiment 2 und 3 zeigten, dass die Absicht, bestimmte Reize zu nutzen, ein entscheidender Faktor dabei ist, ob diese Reize auch unbewusst einen Effekt entfalten können. Zudem wurde hier gezeigt, dass Aufmerksamkeitsverschiebungen durch zentral präsentierte, maskierte Pfeile ausgelöst werden können. Die Experimente 4 und 5 erweiterten diesen Befund auf Hinweisreize, die keine inhärente räumliche Bedeutung haben. Hier konnte bestätigt werden, dass eigentlich endogen gesteuerte Aufmerksamkeitsverschiebungen durch unbewusste Reize induziert werden können. Die Experimente 6 und 7 zeigten, dass selbst ein zentraler kognitiver Kontrollprozess wie die Aktivierung verschiedener Aufgabeneinstellungen nicht bewusstseinspflichtig ist, sondern im Gegenteil durch unbewusste Stimulation in Gang gesetzt werden kann. Letztendlich werden diese Ergebnisse zueinander in Beziehung gesetzt. Es wird diskutiert, inwiefern das Konzept kognitiver Kontrolle und die Grenzen unbewusster Verarbeitung neu betrachtet werden müssen. Außerdem werden mögliche zukünftige Forschungsfelder in diesem Bereich aufgezeigt. KW - Bewusstsein KW - unconscious processing KW - cognitive control KW - Kognitiver Prozess KW - Allgemeine Psychologie Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-76950 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reuss, Heiko A1 - Pohl, Carsten A1 - Kiesel, Andrea A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Instructed illiteracy reveals expertise-effects on unconscious processing JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - We used a new methodological approach to investigate whether top-down influences like expertise determine the extent of unconscious processing. This approach does not rely on preexisting differences between experts and novices, but instructs essentially the same task in a way that either addresses a domain of expertise or not. Participants either were instructed to perform a lexical decision task (expert task) or to respond to a combination of single features of word and non-word stimuli (novel task). The stimuli and importantly also the mapping of responses to those stimuli, however, were exactly the same in both groups. We analyzed congruency effects of masked primes depending on the instructed task. Participants performing the expert task responded faster and less error prone when the prime was response congruent rather than incongruent. This effect was significantly reduced in the novel task, and even reversed when excluding identical prime-target pairs. This indicates that the primes in the novel task had an effect on a perceptual level, but were not able to impact on response activation. Overall, these results demonstrate an expertise-based top-down modulation of unconscious processing that cannot be explained by confounds that are otherwise inherent in comparisons between novices and experts. KW - top-down control KW - expertise KW - masked priming KW - unconscious processing KW - lexical decision task Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125332 VL - 6 IS - 239 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Foerster, Anna A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Reuss, Heiko A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Commentary: Feeling the Conflict: The Crucial Role of Conflict Experience in Adaptation JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - A commentary on: Feeling the Conflict: The Crucial Role of Conflict Experience in Adaptationby Desender, K., Van Opstal, F., and Van den Bussche, E. (2014). Psychol. Sci. 25, 675–683. doi:10.1177/0956797613511468 Conflict adaptation in masked priming has recently been proposed to rely not on successful conflictresolution but rather on conflict experience (Desender et al., 2014). We re-assessed this proposal ina direct replication and also tested a potential confound due toconflict strength. The data supported this alternative view, but also failed to replicate basic conflict adaptation effects of the original studydespite considerable power. KW - conflict adaptation KW - conflict experience KW - conflict strength KW - cognitive conflict KW - cognitive control Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-190032 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 8 IS - 1405 ER -