Exclusion failure does not demonstrate unconscious perception II: evidence from a forced-choice exclusion task
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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues
Published on: June 3, 2013
1Department of Psychology and Sociology, Georgia Southwestern State University, 800 Wheatley Street, Americus, GA 31709, USA. gdf@canes.gsw.edu <gdf@canes.gsw.edu>
Abstract:
Systematic failure to perform exclusion (making a response that opposes the participant's natural inclinations) for briefly displayed, masked words has been interpreted as evidence of unconscious perception. The present study required participants to make a forced-choice exclusion after viewing masked word targets. The forced-choice exclusion task was properly performed in all experiments, in contrast to previous studies that have utilized stem-completion as a dependent variable. The exclusion failure effects interpreted as unconscious perception in earlier studies appear to be caused by an insensitive dependent variable (stem-completion) rather than unconscious perception.
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