Search

Whilst alterations in emotional face processing, as indicated by event-related potentials (ERPs), are associated with depression and anxiety symptoms in clinical and non-clinical samples, it has remained unclear whether they are related to mental wellbeing. The current study aimed to address this question in a non-clinical sample. The analysis included 402 adult twins from the TWIN-E study. The COMPAS-W and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42) were used to measure mental wellbeing and depression/anxiety symptoms, respectively. Participants viewed facial expressions under Unmasked (conscious) and Masked (subliminal) conditions while ERPs were recorded. The associations of emotion processing with mental wellbeing and depression/anxiety symptoms were assessed using multivariate linear mixed models. There was a strong association between depression/anxiety symptoms and the N170 amplitude difference for the Fear - Happy contrast in the Masked condition after controlling for wellbeing scores (B = 0.34, p .001). Specifically, higher depression/anxiety symptoms were associated with a lack of differentiation between fearful and happy faces. No associations were found between emotional face processing and mental wellbeing scores. These results indicate that even within a non-clinical sample, alterations in emotional ERPs, namely the N170, reflect differences in depression/anxiety symptoms rather than differences in wellbeing. Furthermore, this effect was limited to automatic processing, rather than conscious processing of emotional stimuli, suggesting the observed differences apply only to the subconscious pathway.

Angle-closure glaucoma secondary to ciliary body cysts is a rare condition. Different pharmacological and surgical treatment modalities have been described. Among these, subliminal transscleral cyclophotocoagulation is a promising alternative due to fewer ocular complications and the same intraocular pressure reducing efficacy. The case is presented of a 33-year-old woman with a 6-year history of uncontrolled ocular hypertension, and a one-month history of glaucoma, treated with multiple drugs and surgical interventions, with persistent elevated intraocular pressure. She came to the clinic due to eye pain and photophobia of the right eye of 3 days onset prior to her visit. An ultrasound biomicroscopy was performed, finding cysts in the ciliary body. It was then decided to perform subliminal transscleral cyclophotocoagulation, achieving a reduction in intraocular pressure, which was maintained after three months of follow-up.

Study design Observational cross-sectional study. Objectives To determine the differences between persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) and control individuals in terms of conscious and unconscious sexual responses to subliminally presented visual sexual stimuli. Setting Spinal cord injury rehabilitation center in northern Italy. Methods A two-part behavioral experiment was conducted on 40 participants (27 individuals with SCI; 13 controls). In first part, all participants were subliminally exposed to a prime picture (neutral or sexual) and asked to rate the extent to which they were emotionally aroused, while watching a set of explicit target pictures (neutral or sexual). In the second part, choice reaction time task was employed, wherein participants were shown a subliminal prime picture (neutral or sexual) followed by an explicit target picture (neutral or sexual) superimposed by a black dot and were asked to locate the dot as fast as possible. Results In the first part, men with SCI reported higher levels of emotional arousal to explicit sexual target pictures compared to other groups. In the second part, slower choice reaction times were found in the SCI group, particularly with sexual prime picture. Moreover, females with SCI spent more time during implicit motor learning tasks with sexual target pictures than other groups. Conclusion We found differences in the experience of subliminal and explicit sexual pictures not only between the two groups, but also between females and males with SCI. Attention should thus be paid when considering sexual experience at subliminal and conscious level in SCI population for future research and rehabilitative protocols.

Previous research has shown that emotions can alter our sense of ownership. Whether this relationship is modulated by differences in emotion experience and awareness, however, remains unclear. We investigated this by comparing the susceptibility to the rubber hand illusion (RHI) between participants who were either exposed to a low-arousing emotion induction (sadness) or placed in a neutral control group. Several factors that might influence this relationship were considered: dissociative symptoms were included to observe if a sadness induction led to a higher RHI score in participants scoring high in dissociation, as a result of detached emotion experience. Whether the level of awareness of the emotion mattered was also tested, as subliminal processing was shown to require less focal attention. Therefore, our sample (N = 122) was divided into three experimental groups: Sad pictures were presented to two of the three groups differing in presentation mode (subliminal: n = 40, supraliminal: n = 41), neutral pictures were presented supraliminally to the control group (n = 41). Additionally, the effects of slow (3 cm/s) and fast (30 cm/s) stroking, applied either synchronously or asynchronously, were examined as the comforting effects of stroking might interfere with the emotion induction. Results showed that the supraliminal sadness induction was associated with a stronger subjective illusion, but not with a higher proprioceptive drift compared to the subliminal induction. In addition, a stronger subjective illusion after fast and synchronous stroking was found compared to slow and asynchronous stroking. A significant proprioceptive drift was detected independent of group and stroking style. Both slow and synchronous stroking were perceived as more comforting than their respective counterparts. Participants with higher dissociative symptoms were more susceptible to the subjective illusion, especially in the supraliminal group in the synchronous condition. We concluded that individual differences in emotion experience are likely to play a role in body ownership. However, we cannot clarify at this stage whether differences in proprioception and the subjective illusion depend on the type of emotion experienced (e.g. different levels of arousal) and on concomitant changes in multisensory integration processes.

Not only rely on aesthetics alone, but character design also requires things that underlie decision making in the design process. The consideration may refer to the type of story, style and appearance that also refers to the form, which is part of the elements of design, but other than those designers must also be paid attention to other things that related with the problem that occurs when the game is played. Games will be played by players who in fact have experiences that will later be brought into the game and instead bring experience from within the game to the real world. This unconscious condition can also be used as a design consideration.

In the verbal affective priming paradigm, the properties of a subliminally presented stimulus alter the interpretation of neutral target stimulus. In the experiment reported here, we tested the role of four factors (valence, origin, arousing properties and subjective significance) that determine the emotional reactions to words in affective priming. Subliminal masked presentation of words preceded the explicit task, which was assessment of neutral Quick Response code (QR code) stimuli. The QRs were codes for words representing personality traits. The results showed the effect of assimilation (negative words caused a negative interpretation, positive caused a positive interpretation) for words’ emotional valence and no effects for origin. Concerning arousal, we found a weak negative trend. In the case of subjective significance, a moderate positive trend was found. These results suggest that affective priming effects are susceptible not only to the valence of priming stimuli but also to activation factors.

IntroductionWithholding uninitiated actions and cancelling ongoing ones are two main components of response inhibition, a key element of the executive control. Inhibitory performance is sensitive to emotional contexts elicited by subliminal and supraliminal visual material. However, whether stimuli from other sensory modalities, such as odours, would equally modulate response inhibition remains unclear. Here, we aimed to assess the effect of task-irrelevant odours as a function of their valence and threshold on both action withholding and action cancellation of reach-to-press movements.MethodThirty-two healthy participants performed a Go/No-Go task that included the presentation of pleasant (orange) and unpleasant (trimethyloxazole) odour primes at supra- and sub-threshold levels; clean air was included as a control condition. The reach-to-press responses were composed of an initial release phase and a subsequent reaching phase.ResultsOnly the supra-threshold pleasant (vs. control) odour impaired action withholding. Moreover, the pleasant (vs. control) odour—presented at both sub- and supra-threshold levels—elicited more accurate Go responses, whereas the sub- and supra-threshold pleasant and unpleasant (vs. control) odours triggered faster responses in the release phase. Additionally, only the supra-threshold pleasant (vs. unpleasant) odour impaired action cancellation in the reaching phase. Furthermore, reaching responses were slower following the supra-threshold unpleasant (vs. control) odour.ConclusionsOur findings extend the sparse literature on the impact of odour stimuli on goal-directed behaviour, highlighting the role of both odour valence and threshold in the modulation of response inhibition.ImplicationsDetermining the mechanisms by which odour stimuli modulate response inhibition lays the foundations for research on odour-triggered disinhibition.

Previous studies have suggested that facilitating creative problem solving via supraliminal monetary rewards is unsuccessful and controversial. In contrast, subliminal monetary rewards have been found to facilitate creative problem solving. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of subliminal and supraliminal monetary rewards on creative problem solving remain unclear. The present study investigated the impact of monetary rewards on Chinese verbal compound remote-associated (CRA) problem solving using electrophysiological techniques and behavioral measures. The results showed that people solved more CRA problems when motivated by subliminal monetary rewards than supraliminal monetary rewards and solved CRA problems more often via insight solutions under low-reward conditions. The electrophysiological results showed that subliminal monetary rewards induced a more positive P200–600 amplitude than supraliminal monetary rewards. Supraliminal rewards induced a larger beta-band event-related desynchronization (β-ERD) during the early problem-solving phase and alpha-band event-related synchronization (α-ERS) during the late problem-solving phase than subliminal rewards. Moreover, the brain-behavior correlations revealed a relationship between the P200–600 amplitude and behavior performance, indicating differential effects between subliminal rewards and supraliminal rewards on creative problem solving. These results extend prior research and indicate that compared with supraliminal rewards, subliminal rewards could facilitate creative problem solving and insight solutions by lowering attentional selectivity. In general, the present study provided the first strong evidence of the differential modulation of creative problem solving by subliminal and supraliminal monetary rewards from behavioral, neurophysiological and brain-behavior correlation dimensions.

Abstract. Background: Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among 15–29-year-olds and Instagram is one of the most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms among this age group. A previous study presented preliminary evidence for suicide-related "subliminal messages" on Instagram, defined as very brief presentations of suicide-related content in video posts that users have no conscious awareness of. Aim: A systematic quantitative study was pending. Method: We conducted a quantitative content analysis of 100 Instagram video posts. A frame-by-frame coding procedure allowed for an assessment of whether suicide-related content was depicted in very brief segments, even when this content could not be consciously recognized when watched at regular speed. Results: Analysis indicates that a substantial amount of suicide-related content is presented in very brief shots. We identified 67 very brief shots that appeared in 21 video posts. Of interest, 13 of these video posts presented more than one very brief suicide-related shot. Limitation: The subjective threshold of conscious awareness differs inter-individually. This complicates the operationalization of subliminal messages. Conclusion: Subliminal messages are ethically highly problematic. There is a need for a greater awareness of possible suicide-related subliminal messages on Instagram.

Recent research suggests that people can learn to link the control process of task switching to predictive cues so that switch costs are attenuated following informative precues of switch likelihood. However, the precise conditions that shape such contextual cuing of control are not well understood. Farooqui and Manly (2015) raised the possibility that cued task switching is more effective when cues of control demand are presented subliminally. In the current study, we aimed to replicate and extend these findings by more systematically manipulating whether cues of control demand are consciously perceived or are presented subliminally and whether participants have explicit prior knowledge of the cue meaning or acquire cue knowledge through experience. The direct replication was unsuccessful: We found no evidence for effective subliminal cuing but observed some evidence for participants reducing switch costs with explicit, supraliminal cues. Thus, cognitive control may be guided most effectively by explicitly understood and consciously perceived precues.

We discuss two relatively understudied yet important phenomena relevant to the ecologically crucial task of gathering reliable information from human faces. First, facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) predicts aggressiveness judgments and is associated with aggression-related behavior and life history outcomes. A significant body of research indicates fWHR is an honest evolutionary signal of propensity to aggression yet little is known about how or if this signal is preserved in judgments across race boundaries. Evidence for a universal relationship between increased fWHR and enhanced aggression perception has been found using Asian and white face stimuli, but race moderated the relationship between high fWHR and ratings in a pain ascription task using black and white faces. Second, we examine research on olfactory cues to face perception and focus particular attention on the possibility that face judgments may be influenced by putrescine, an organic compound found recently to heighten threat and escape-related cognitions in a single subliminal odor presentation study. Here we probe how fWHR and face race interact in aggression judgments during subliminal exposure to putrescine and a control condition. We present a standardized method of subliminal putrescine delivery and find null effects of putrescine on face judgments. Overall, our primarily white participants show a reduced difference in aggressiveness ratings to black faces from low to high levels of fWHR compared to the same contrast in white face stimuli, consistent with an account in which black faces are not perceived with the same configural precision as white faces.

In the present article, the issue of identification of sophisticated and problematic aspects of the regulation of subliminal advertising in the national legislation of Ukraine and perspectives for the improvement of the legal regulation of subliminal advertising is considered. It is determined that legislative and normative regulation of public relations that arise in the process of defining the concept of subliminal advertising and the problems of such legislative regulation are urgent questions in the current society. Given that subliminal advertising affects subconsciousness and manipulates human behavior, it harms not only consumers of advertising, as it misleads, disorients, has a subliminal effect, but also deprives media outlets of adequate payment for fair advertising. Besides, hidden advertising also harms society by ignoring the laws, requirements of journalistic ethics and hence – provides demoralization. That is why there is a necessity to analyze ambiguous aspects of subliminal advertising and justify the need to improve the possibilities of its legal limitations and control.

It is widely assumed that subliminal word priming is case insensitive and that a short SOA (

Abstract. In studies that use subliminal presentations, participants may become aware of stimuli that are intended to remain subliminal. A common solution to this problem is to analyze the results of the group of participants for whom the stimuli remained subliminal. A recent article ( Shanks, 2017 ) argued that this method leads to a regression to the mean artifact, which may account for many of the observed effects. However, conceptual and statistical characteristics of the original publication lead to overestimation of the influence of the artifact. Using simulations, we demonstrate that this overestimation leads to the mistaken conclusion that regression to the mean accounts for nonconscious effects. We conclude by briefly outlining a new description of the influence of the artifact and how it should be statistically addressed.

Some content can be so well crafted that consumers are not aware that they are actually part of the promotion activity. The message is concealed, transformed, and communicates with consumers with associative connections at the subconscious level. Subconscious communication is a technique that marketers will use more and more, so in the design and realization of promotional activities, they combine the knowledge of other sciences and the latest technological inventions. Subconscious communication is often far more effective than direct addressing, provoking, and causing the desired effect, sometimes completely contrary to what the content posted seems to indicate. Content placed so as to address consumers at the subconscious level is called subliminal messages or subliminal. Very weak signals, stimuli below the threshold of conscious perception are not registered consciously. It is especially important to note that reason cannot resist this type of message because it is not recognized, it is circumvented even in the stage of stimulus. This is the main danger of subliminal messages; bypassing reasoning insert direct information in a mind that cannot be confronted. This is a very unusual method of manipulative persuasion technique for individuals and the masses exposed to the effects of subliminal marketing.

The self-face advantage has been demonstrated not only at the supraliminal level, but also at the subliminal level. However, it remains unclear whether subliminal self-face processing involves the same neural networks as those for supraliminal self-face processing. Here, we show that the ventral tegmental area, a center of the dopamine reward pathway, exhibited greater activation to subliminal presentations of the self-face than those of the others’ faces, whereas subliminal presentations of the others’ faces induced activation in the amygdala, which generally responds to unfamiliar information. This self-other difference in brain response was consistently observed even when the facial configuration was modified without changing the shape of the facial parts. The present findings suggest that the dopamine reward pathway is involved in automatic self-advantage in face processing, and the subliminal self-other facial discrimination does not depend on information of the precise facial configuration.

The information contained in light from our surroundings is often taken for granted because of its ubiquity, and the subliminal nature of the way we normally use it. Revealing the richness and depth of our common human experience through the unexpected qualities of light is seen as an artistic opportunity. An architectural training enables the integration of a subjective and qualitative experience, with the ‘objective’ structures that we are surrounded by. The built space can act as a ‘neutral’ reference onto which the complexity of daylight is superimposed. The author, trained as an architect, has been involved for more than 30 years in the design and construction of non-gallery artworks that engage the experience of natural light in public and semi-public spaces. This practitioner reflection discusses the relation of the position of the observer and sources of light, and how the movement of the viewer acts as a catalyst for revealing their situation through six works of various scales that the author worked on in New York; Boston; Abu Dhabi; London; and Berlin.

This study looks at the phenomenon of avoidance as a behaviour and as a strategy applied in an academic context in the case of final year management students sitting for their end-term exam where multiple questions are offered and the students are allowed to choose and attempt answers for selected questions. Why did they not answer it is for teachers to chew the cud. The case looks at how educators need to realign their perspectives and improve subsequent class delivery in terms of realigned content emphasis and pedagogical initiatives after papers have been evaluated and marked. The article suggests that accreditation processes should take note of the impact on overall academic measurement of program performance. Research question Research question for which perspectives have been opened up for curated answers are: How to discover topics requiring teachers to introspect and reimagine their classroom delivery and their engagement strategies? The principle of inversion brings into relief these discoveries. Theory: The study draws on psychological and physical sciences wherein multiple theories explain why a particular path has been eschewed. Type of the case: The case study strategy draws on the experiences of both the researchers and the participants and therefore the orientation of this case is primarily heuristic. Purposive data samples were used accessing data in the academic databases related to 198 students for the core compulsory course related to Sales and Distribution Management. Basis of the case: Actual score sheets for all 198 students for their final exam mapped for each question. Therefore, concepts for each question have been assessed. Using the principle of inversion/reversal the complementary gaps have been discovered, quantified, and interpreted. Findings: From the complementary data, it becomes self-explanatory for an educator that the blind spots—gaps in understanding—have been identified for future course corrections in delivery and engagement. Discussions: The avenues to be taken is food for thought for each educator and the audience to be addressed. Meaningful eye-opening gaps have been identified for future courses of action depending on concept to be redelivered. These findings have implications for all accreditation processes.

Studies found that subliminal primes can be associated with specific tasks to facilitate task performance, and such learning is highly adaptive and generalizable. Meanwhile, conditioning studies suggest that aversive/reward learning and generalization actually occur at the semantic level. The current study shows that prime-task associations can also be generalized to novel word/neighbour primes from the same semantic category, and this occurs without contingency awareness. Previous studies have counterintuitively suggested that both the learning of task priming and the semantic priming of word neighbours depend on the lack of visibility. Here, we show that semantic generalization indeed depends on reduced visibility, but cannot occur subliminally. The current study shows for the first time that semantic learning and generalization can occur without any emotional or motivational factors, and that semantic priming can occur for arbitrary-linked stimuli in a context completely devoid of semantics.

Screen vampires define themselves through dominant or subliminal variations on the loss of, and desire for, fertility. Taking the gender-fluid figure of Dracula from Bram Stoker to the 2020 Netflix...

Objective Previous research suggested that exposure to the thin beauty ideal propagated by the media is associated with body dissatisfaction and the development of disordered eating. Given recent suggestions regarding the role of automatic processes, we aimed to enhance our understanding of automatic, unconscious responses to body pictures and the association with the internalization of the thin ideal and the severity of eating disorder symptoms. Method An affective priming task with body pictures of different weight as primes and a normal-weight body picture as target, which had to be evaluated with regard to attractiveness and desirability, was administered to healthy women with either subliminal prime presentation (Experiment 1) or conscious presentation (Experiment 2). Results Subliminal presentation did not affect the evaluation of the normal-weight target, although strength of evaluative shifts was significantly associated with internalization of the thin ideal. In contrast, the conscious presentation of the ultra-thin prime decreased and of the obese prime increased desirability and attractiveness ratings of the target. Discussion Prevention strategies focusing on the critical evaluation of the thin ideal are important. Future studies are warranted to enhance our understanding of automatic, unconscious processes in women experiencing eating disorders.

Subliminal messages play a vital role in attracting the consumer's attention in the world of brands. Visual subliminal messages are designed to be unnoticeable at a conscious level, bypassing the conscious mind and submitting messages directly to the subconscious mind. Although consumers may not actually attempt to decode the semiotic elements of a logo, its interpretation is an intersemiotic act. In this interplay between a logo's visual and verbal aspects, intersemiotic translation provides a useful theoretical framework to investigate subliminal advertising messages. The ability to persuade consumers is a powerful tool in marketing, and subliminal persuasion can affect markets and control consumer behavior. The authors explore consumers' awareness of subliminal messages by focusing on semiotics, symbolism, and persuasion as key issues in the translation of advertisements. Participants were exposed to logos of international brands, and through a structured questionnaire and a semi-structured interview, they were asked to identify their form, color, logo, brand name, or slogan.

This study aimed at assessing visual word recognition in normal skilled (NRs) and disabled adult Arabic readers (DRs) using masked subliminal and supraliminal word presentations in a lexical decision task (LDT). The main assumption of this investigation was that, as a consequence of their reading disability, DRs would exhibit slower reaction times (RTs) and lower performance than NR in the supraliminal condition. By contrast, since words identified subliminally are thought to occur thanks to advanced orthographic (not phonological skills), it was assumed that this presentation mode would diminish the differences between DRs and NRs. RTs and d’ detection measures were analyzed in 59 NRs and 21 DRs who had to decide whether visually presented letter strings corresponded to real Arabic words or to pseudowords. The statistical analyses conducted on RTs and d’ showed that, although both groups showed a lexicality effect (faster RTs for words than for pseudowords), the DRs compared to NRs showed longer RTs and lower detection measures in the supraliminal mode. Importantly, in the subliminal mode, no group effect was found in terms of RTs and the size of the difference between groups in terms of detection decreased. Also, in this latter presentation condition, we observed that the lexicality effect was significant in the DRs but not in the NRs. These findings are discussed in relation to other studies indicating that DRs might have benefited from good orthographic skills, on which they rely to compensate for their phonological deficits.

The paper is a study of the interplay of segmental and suprasegmental means of the folk text organization that serves the realization of the text pragmatic orientation as well as producing the suggestive subliminal stimuli on the recipient.

Under labels such as unconscious processing and subliminal perception, identification of stimuli falling below the subjective threshold (whether truly unconscious or not) has been found remarkably accurate in some experiments while completely at chance in others. Here, we first identify that an apparent window of subliminal perception arises in humans under specific stimulus conditions using different experimental paradigms and analysis methods. We then show that the standard signal detection theory (SDT) model is unable to account for this window and extend it until it is. We finally compare a range of models on empirical data. The models performing best are notable for their absence of hierarchical levels, indicating that the window could be a base property of any phenomenally conscious system. The models explain previously incompatible findings in the literature, and they allow for estimations of peaks in subthreshold perception across the spectrum of stimulus saliency, which may be used in further studies of subliminal perception.

This study extends the customer equity paradigm to propose a green induced tourist equity model in the tourism context. Drawing on the attitude literature pertaining to subliminal persuasion and pr...

Consciously and subliminally processed information can both lead to conflicts that hinder goal-directed behaviour. Conflict monitoring processes are required to cope with situations where one or multiple conflicts occur. It has been suggested, that medial-frontal theta oscillations are associated with the implementation of cognitive control and that conflicts increase theta band activity. Still, a causal mechanistic understanding of theta oscillations during the resolution of combined subliminal and conscious conflicts is missing. To investigate this, we combined EEG signal decomposition methods with EEG beamforming approaches and used the obtained information to modulate theta oscillations with tACS in a second experiment. This showed that theta oscillations in the superior frontal cortex (BA6) and the left paracentral lobule encoded stimulus-related processes during the resolution of conflicts arising from both conscious and subliminal information processing. Response selection and motor-related processes encoded by theta oscillations were not similarly modulated. Thus, the joint modulation of conflicts by conscious and subliminal information affects very specific aspects of the information coded in theta oscillations. Results indicate, that entraining theta-oscillations using tACS modulates conflict resolution depending on the already existing theta activity level. In summary, the study provides further evidence that frontal theta oscillations play a crucial role in conflict monitoring and control.

This study aims to understand how hotel videos embedded with a smiling face emoji as a subliminal message affect consumers’ selection of hotels, with their brain activities measured and collected while they watched the videos. Data was collected from sixteen participants who completed two rounds of experiments. A chi-square test of homogeneity, paired sample t-test, and Bayes factor were performed to address the two proposed research questions. The results of this study reveal that participants’ selection of hotels would be significantly affected by the subliminal stimuli of a smiling face emoji. Meanwhile, neuroscientific data identifies significant differences between participants’ two (theta and beta) out of five bands of brainwaves while they were viewing hotel videos with and without the subliminal message. Suggestions for future studies and practical operations are also discussed.

This study aims to see how subliminal dysfunction occurs in social media in an Islamic context. The research technique used is literature study, looking at various sources regarding subliminals and relating them to conditions in social media. This type of research is descriptive qualitative research, which is a research process to understand human or social problems by creating a comprehensive and complex picture presented in words, reporting detailed views obtained from information sources, and carried out in a different setting natural. While the approach used is phenomenology, which is to describe the reality that is happening without explaining the relationship between variables. The research results obtained are that Islam teaches its people to have ethics in carrying out all activities, including communication on social media. In the concept of Subliminal Message from hidden messages invites the public to never trust the information received from social media, before finding out the truth and accuracy of the message, from sources that can be trusted, supported, and related to the message. The conclusion in this research is that the Subliminal Message concept invites the public to never believe the information received from social media, before finding out the truth and accuracy of the message, from sources that can be trusted, supported, and related to the message.

The main purpose in creating advertising in social intuitions is to affect consumers psychologically and identify their needs that they had not realized, also to ensure that they see themselves incomplete and lacking in what is advertised. These explicit messages are to show them the person or the image they want to be. However, each of these explicit messages have implicit ones which is sent via different channels. This study was conducted by using quantitative method in order to find how advertising in social institutions responds to the needs of people by using implicit messages. As a result of the study, explicit messages which have a huge psychological guidance, and affect the consumer behaviour subconsciously, can be clearly determined while analysing these messages. This study shows the intensity of the effect of subliminal messages in advertisement done by social institutions.

Sensitive responding to facial information is of key importance during human social interactions. Research shows that adults glean much information from another person's face without conscious perception, attesting to the robustness of face processing in the service of adaptive social functioning. Until recently, it was unclear whether such subliminal face processing is an outcome of extensive learning, resulting in adult face processing skills, or an early defining feature of human face processing. Here, we review recent research examining the early ontogeny and brain correlates of subliminal face processing, demonstrating that subliminal face processing: (1) emerges during the first year of life; (2) is multifaceted in response to transient (gaze, emotion) and stable (trustworthiness) facial cues; (3) systematically elicits frontal brain responses linked to attention allocation. The synthesized research suggests that subliminal face processing emerges early in human development and thus may play a foundational role during human social interactions. This offers a fresh look at the ontogenetic origins of unconscious face processing and informs theoretical accounts of human sociality.

The present study aims to investigate whether subliminal stimuli can influence interpersonal trust and to explore the mediating mechanisms. Participants were required to do a lexical decision task while the "trust" or "suspicion" Chinese words were embedded as the subliminal stimuli. Afterward, they played a trust game and reported person and situation perception. Results indicate that compared with exposure to "suspicion" subliminal stimuli, exposure to "trust" subliminal stimuli significantly improved interpersonal trust. Furthermore, person perception mediated the influence of subliminal stimuli on interpersonal trust, but situation perception did not. The results suggest that subliminal priming techniques can influence interpersonal trust, and such impact is mediated by person perception.

By anticipating potential rewards, external cues can guide behavior to achieve a goal. Whether the conscious elaboration of these cues is necessary to elicit cue-guided choices is still unknown. The goal of the present study is to test whether the subliminal presentation of a visual cue previously paired with a reward is sufficient to bias responses that can lead to the same or a similar reward. To this aim, three experiments compared the subliminal and supraliminal presentation of reward-associated cues during a Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer task. In line with previous evidence, results showed that the supraliminal presentation of reward-associated Pavlovian cues biased participant’s choice towards motivationally similar rewards (general transfer) as well as towards rewards sharing the precise sensory-specific properties of the cue (outcome-specific transfer). In striking contrast, subliminal cues biased choice only towards motivationally similar rewards (general transfer). Taken together, these findings suggest that cue-guided choices are modulated by the level of perceptual threshold (i.e., subliminal vs supraliminal) of reward-associated cues. Although conscious elaboration of the cue is necessary to guide choice towards a specific reward, subliminal processing is still sufficient to push towards choices sharing the motivational properties of the cue. Implications for everyday life, clinical conditions, and theoretical accounts of cue-guided choices are discussed.

People make decisions every day or form an opinion based on persuasion processes, whether through advertising, planning leisure activities with friends or public speeches. Most of the time, however, subliminal persuasion processes triggered by behavioral cues (rather than the content of the message) play a far more important role than most people are aware of. To raise awareness of the different aspects of persuasion (how and what), we present a multimodal dialog system consisting of two virtual agents that use synthetic speech in a discussion setting to present pros and cons to a user on a controversial topic. The agents are able to adapt their emotions based on explicit feedback of the users to increase their perceived persuasiveness during interaction using Reinforcement Learning.

Görsel medya, çocukların yaşamlarında büyük etkiye sahiptir. Çocukların davranışlarını, tutumlarını ve dünya görüşlerini şekillendirmesi sebebiyle sosyalleştirici etkisi en fazla olan araçlardan birisidir. Çocukların yaşamlarını zenginleştirmesi, sağlıksız davranışları değiştirmesi, eğitimi ve bilgiyi yaygınlaştırması, milli ve manevi değerlerin çocuğa kazandırılması, hoşgörüye teşvik etmesi, toplumsal farkları azaltmasını sağlayabilmesi gibi işlevleri bulunmaktadır. Ancak diğer bir açıdan bakıldığında görsel medya çocuğun hayal gücünü sınırlandırır, öğrenme güçlüğüne ve okul başarısında düşmeye neden olur. Şiddet içeren davranışlara teşvik etme, ahlaki değerlerin bozulmasına öncülük etme, sosyal duygusal duyarlılıkları azaltma, anksiyete, depresyon ve intihar davranışları üzerinde kolaylaştırıcı etki yapma, yerel kültürleri baskılama ve yabancılaşmaya katkı sağlama gibi olumsuz etkileri vardır. Televizyon, sinema, internet gibi görsel medya araçlarının içerdiği subliminal mesajlar çocuk üzerinde direkt bir etkiye sahip değildir, ancak dolaylı yoldan bilinçaltını etkileyerek çocukların davranışları üzerinde değişiklik yaratır. Çocukların görsel medya ile geçirdikleri sürenin uzunluğu göz önüne alındığında, çocuklar üzerinde olumsuz kalıcı etkileri olmaktadır. Çocuklar bu konu karşısında savunmasız durumda oldukları için çocuk ve görsel medya ilişkisi üzerinde dikkatle durulması gereken önemli bir konudur. Bu derlemenin amacı, görsel medya araçlarının içerdiği subliminal mesajların çocuk sağlığı üzerindeki olumsuz etkilerini literatür bilgileri ışığında sunmaktır., Visual media shapes children's behaviors, attitudes and their perception of the world, and it is one of the most socializing tools. Thus, visual media has a significant effect on children's lives. It has positive aspects such as enriching the lives of children, changing unhealthy behaviors, disseminating education and knowledge, bringing national and spiritual values to children, encouraging tolerance, and reducing social differences. With a different point of view, visual media limits the child's imagination, school success and causes learning difficulties. Furthermore, it has also negative aspects including encouraging violent behavior, leading to the deterioration of moral values, reducing social-emotional sensitivities, facilitating effects on anxiety, depression and suicidal behaviors, suppressing local cultures and contributing to alienation. Although visual media including television, cinema, and the internet does not have a direct effect on children, they could affect children’s subconscious indirectly with subliminal messages. As a result, it may cause changes in their behaviors. Given the amount of time children spend with visual media, it has long-lasting negative effects on children. Since children are vulnerable to this issue, the relationship between children and visual media is an important issue that needs to be considered carefully. The aim of this review is to present the negative effects of subliminal messages in visual media on child health according to the current literature.

Scholars have become increasingly interested in the importance of corporate social advocacy to an organization’s bottom line. However, few researchers have investigated the subliminal mechanism with which corporations’ political engagement attracts public attention and creates positive corporate-public relationships. This study examines corporations’ identification with sociopolitical issues as an identity signaling practice. Rooted in the signaling and social identity theories, this study proposes a model that demonstrates the positive effects of corporate social advocacy activities on brand loyalty. This study sheds light on the role of brand community engagement as a signal verification process. Public-company identification leads to brand loyalty, which indicates the public’s acceptance of a corporation’s signal. We tested our proposed model through an online survey with participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk ( N = 960). Theoretical and practical contributions of this study were discussed.

Unlike classical theories of automaticity, refined theories suggest that unconscious automatic processes depend on cognitive control settings. Cognitive control influences on unconscious word and object processing are well documented, but corresponding findings in the field of face processing are heterogeneous. The present study therefore investigated, whether subliminal face priming in a gender categorization task is susceptible to feature-specific attention. Participants performed a gender decision task by orthogonally varying gender congruency (prime-target: same vs. different gender) and emotion congruency (prime-target: same vs. different emotional facial expression) using a masked priming paradigm. Perceptual vs. emotional induction tasks, performed prior to prime presentation, served to activate corresponding attentional task sets. Subliminal gender priming (faster reactions to gender-congruent primes) differed as a function of induction task and emotional congruency. Following perceptual induction, gender priming was only obtained in the emotionally congruent condition, whereas following emotional induction gender priming was observed independently of emotional congruency. In line with the classical notion of automaticity, subliminal gender priming did not depend on a specific attentional focus. However, attention to shape facilitated subliminal processing of task-irrelevant emotional facial expressions. Most likely, mutual facilitation of emotionally congruent prime and target representations enhanced gender priming compared with emotionally incongruent pairings.

This study investigated whether participants could process the same/different pointing relation between two sequentially displayed subliminal arrows in a prime across a window of time. The motor‐response priming was distinguished from the visual feature priming. Of the two types of priming, only the motor‐response priming could reflect an unconscious integrated processing of the pointing directions of two arrows. In two experiments, the two masked arrows pointing in the same or different directions (e.g., > > or > The results of Experiment 1 did not show any visual priming effect, but revealed a strong positive reaction time (RT)/accuracy motor‐response priming effect. The results of Experiment 2 and its replicated version revealed moderate positive RT motor‐response priming effects when the two target arrows were pointing in the same directions. Overall, the study indicated that the pointing relation of two subliminally and sequentially displayed arrows could be processed only when the two arrows were presented extremely close in time.

Research objective\ud To determine if Muscle Response Testing (MRT) can be used to distinguish lies from truths using blind test patients.\ud \ud Design\ud A prospective study of diagnostic test accuracy was carried out using MRT to distinguish lies from truth.\ud \ud Methods\ud Twenty practitioners who routinely practised MRT were paired with 20 blind test patients (TPs). TPs were asked to speak simple true and false statements about visual stimuli presented subliminally (at 20 ms). In the subliminal phase, pairs performed 20 MRTs and 20 Intuitive Guesses (IG), consisting of 2 blocks of 10 statements each. In the Supraliminal Phase, the same picture-statement pairs were repeated. The order of stimuli presentation was randomly assigned so that each pair was presented with a unique series of stimuli.\ud \ud Results\ud In the Subliminal Phase, MRT accuracy (as percent correct) was found to be 48.5% (95% CI 42.8–54.2), which was no different from IG accuracy (47.8%; 95% CI 43.2–52.3; p = 0.68) or chance (50.0%; p = 0.59), and no different from MRT accuracy during the supraliminal phase (59.0%; 95% CI 50.4–67.6; p = 0.05). However, supraliminal MRT accuracy was significantly different from chance (p = 0.04), indicating that the pairs could perform MRT proficiently.\ud \ud Conclusion\ud The main reason for finding no effect is suspected to be due to an inadequate subliminal methodology, a process which is quite complex. Other explanations of results include: (1) MRT is not a valid test when the TP is blind, (2) Blinding TPs during MRT will produce ambiguous or unpredictable results, or (3) Nonconscious beliefs cannot be elicited using subliminal stimuli. Future research may wish to focus on exploring these possibilities. More specifically, subsequent studies may wish to use different methods to blind TPs, and establish whether MRT can be used to detect nonconscious processes, a generally held consensus among MRT practitioners.

BackgroundProlonged grief disorder (PGD) has recently been recognized as a separate psychiatric diagnosis, despite controversy over the extent to which it is distinctive from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD).MethodsThis study investigated distinctive neural processes underpinning emotion processing in participants with PGD, PTSD, and MDD with functional magnetic resonance study of 117 participants that included PGD (n = 21), PTSD (n = 45), MDD (n = 26), and bereaved controls (BC) (n = 25). Neural responses were measured across the brain while sad, happy, or neutral faces were presented at both supraliminal and subliminal levels.ResultsPGD had greater activation in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC), bilateral insula, bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices and right caudate and also greater pgACC–right pallidum connectivity relative to BC during subliminal processing of happy faces. PGD was distinct relative to both PTSD and MDD groups with greater recruitment of the medial orbitofrontal cortex during supraliminal processing of sad faces. PGD were also distinct relative to MDD (but not PTSD) with greater activation in the left amygdala, caudate, and putamen during subliminal presentation of sad faces. There was no distinction between PGD, PTSD, and MDD during processing of happy faces.ConclusionsThese results provide initial evidence of distinct neural profiles of PGD relative to related psychopathological conditions, and highlight activation of neural regions implicated in reward networks. This pattern of findings validates current models of PGD that emphasize the roles of yearning and appetitive processes in PGD.

This article presents a discussion of neurocognitive hacking and its potential for use at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of cyber conflict. Neurocognitive hacking refers to the ability to activate specific neural areas of the brain, via subliminal or supraliminal stimuli, to shape the behavioral outcomes of an adversary. Research suggests that awareness of mortality-related stimuli has neural correlates in the right amygdala and left anterior cingulate cortex and mediates negative behavior toward out-group members, including unconscious discriminatory behavior. Given its in-group/out-group dynamic, the phenomenon could be exploited for use in information operations toward target populations, specifically ones that are multiethnic, multicultural, or multireligious. Although development of the theoretical framework behind neurocognitive hacking is ongoing, mortality-related stimuli are proposed to activate one’s unconscious vigilance system to further evaluate the locus and viability of the suspect stimuli. Research suggests that the subsequent discriminatory affective reactions directed toward out-group members are representative of automatic heuristics evolved to protect the organism in the event a stimulus represents a more serious threat to survival. Therefore, presenting mortality-related stimuli over computer networks to targeted audiences may facilitate the ingestion of tailored propaganda or shaping of specific behavioral outcomes within a population, including sowing division in a target community or weakening support for a specific political regime.

International audience; Since speech is a continuous stream with no systematic boundaries between words, how do pre-verbal infants manage to discover words? A proposed solution is that they might use the transitional probability between adjacent syllables, which drops at word boundaries. Here, we tested the limits of this mechanism by increasing the size of the word-unit to four syllables, and its automaticity by testing asleep neonates. Using markers of statistical learning in neonates' EEG, compared to adult behavioral performances in the same task, we confirmed that statistical learning is automatic enough to be efficient even in sleeping neonates. We also revealed that: (1) Successfully tracking transition probabilities (TP) in a sequence is not sufficient to segment it. (2) Prosodic cues, as subtle as subliminal pauses, enable to recover words segmenting capacities. (3) Adults' and neonates' capacities to segment streams seem remarkably similar despite the difference of maturation and expertise. Finally, we observed that learning increased the overall similarity of neural responses across infants during exposure to the stream, providing a novel neural marker to monitor learning. Thus, from birth, infants are equipped with adult-like tools, allowing them to extract small coherent word-like units from auditory streams, based on the combination of statistical analyses and auditory parsing cues. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Successfully tracking transitional probabilities in a sequence is not always sufficient to segment it. Word segmentation solely based on transitional probability is limited to bi- or tri-syllabic elements. Prosodic cues, as subtle as subliminal pauses, enable to recover chunking capacities in sleeping neonates and awake adults for quadriplets.

Emotional expressions and attentional processes interact such that emotion increases perceptual sensitivity in modality-specific brain areas leading to more efficient processing of the stimulus. In the current study, we asked the question of whether the emotional expressions can be processed subliminally when faces are attended but the emotional expression is irrelevant. We presented angry and neutral male and female faces supraliminally and subliminally to participants in an attention-shifting paradigm. Emotional expression was irrelevant to the task, but the gender of the face was predictive of the location of a subsequent target. Analysis of reaction times revealed that, in the supraliminal condition, targets appearing at validly cued locations produced quicker responses than targets at invalidly cued locations. Target-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) confirmed this result and showed that attention selection elicited higher responses at attended locations, as reflected by the N1 component. However, voluntary attention shifting was not triggered when the cue was not consciously perceived. No effects of emotion were observed following target presentation, suggesting that the high attentional load required by the experiment may have prevented the processing of emotion for undetectable faces, as demonstrated by the fact that, following cue onset, the N170 was modulated by emotion in supraliminal trials only. We therefore show that emotional expressions cannot be processed without awareness when faces are attended, but the emotional expression is irrelevant.