Emotion in Chinese Words Could Not Be Extracted in Continuous Flash Suppression
Kaiwen Cheng1,2, Aolin Ding1, Lianfang Jiang1
1MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
|October 2, 2019
Summary
The automatic vigilance effect does not extend to written words, even emotional ones. Complex emotional information from suppressed words cannot be processed, suggesting preconsciousness is vital for reading.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Automatic vigilance effect observed for evolutionarily significant stimuli like faces.
- Debate exists on whether this effect applies to evolutionarily recent stimuli, such as written words.
- Previous studies on unconscious processing of emotional words using breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) yielded contradictory results across different languages.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether emotional valence or word length of Simplified Chinese (SC) words influences conscious access during b-CFS.
- To determine if the automatic vigilance effect extends to written words.
- To clarify the role of preconsciousness in processing complex linguistic information.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments using breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS).
- Utilized Simplified Chinese (SC) words of varying lengths (two-character and single-character).
- Assessed conscious access and extraction of emotional information from suppressed words.
Main Results:
- Failed to replicate previous findings on Traditional Chinese (TC) words.
- Complex high-level emotional information could not be extracted from interocularly suppressed words.
- Word length did not modulate conscious access in b-CFS for SC words.
Conclusions:
- Findings do not support the automatic vigilance effect for written words.
- Results align with the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory's distinction between subliminal and preconscious states.
- Preconsciousness or partial awareness appears necessary for high-level cognitive tasks like reading comprehension.
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