Double substitution of non-linguistic perceptual functions

ABSTRACTThis study captured substitution of non-linguistic perceptual functions without awareness. Eighty participants were divided into four groups. All groups were exposed to a respondent-type training procedure in which nine letters were paired with words; four of those words were homophones to numbers for the experimental groups and not for the control groups. Following training, all groups were exposed to a testing condition. One experimental and one control group were given a series of simple mathematical problems containing an unknown shown as a letter. Their task was to substitute the letter for a number. The other experimental and control groups were presented with a simultaneous matching-to-sample test. The results were analyzed in terms of concordance between the number selected and the correspondent homophone word that had previously been trained. Significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups for two of the four homophone numbers, demonstrating substitution of perceptual functions.