Unconscious priming shares a common resource pool with the manipulation subsystem

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Attention Research

Background:

• Working memory comprises distinct maintenance and manipulation subsystems.
• Previous research on working memory and unconscious priming presents paradoxical findings.
• Resource pools for working memory subsystems have not been adequately distinguished.

Purpose of the Study:

• To differentiate the resource pools of working memory's maintenance and manipulation subsystems.
• To investigate the relationship between these subsystems and unconscious priming.
• To resolve paradoxical findings in prior research.

Main Methods:

• Developed maintenance and manipulation dual-task paradigms.
• Participants performed masked priming tasks under varying working memory loads.
• Used Sternberg and N-back tasks to load maintenance and manipulation subsystems, respectively.

Main Results:

• Working memory load successfully impacted unconscious priming only in the manipulation dual task.
• Increased manipulation load decreased unconscious priming.
• Increased maintenance load did not affect unconscious priming.

Conclusions:

• The manipulation subsystem, not the maintenance subsystem, interferes with unconscious priming.
• Proposes a two-pool attention resource model, separating executive and retention resources.
• Unconscious priming shares attentional resources with the working memory manipulation subsystem.