A Neuropsychological Study on Unconscious Information Processing when Receiving Affective and Non-Affective Visual Stimuli

Abstract

Background & Aims: Throughout recent years, the study of unconscious visual processes has increased. Sufficient reductions of the stimulus presentation time are ways to achieve conditions of unawareness. Tachistoscopic experiments are used for this purpose. The recognition of affective word in tachistoscopic is due to the activation of the unconscious state. The main question in the present study was whether affective visual stimuli recognition during a computerized presentation could be influenced by unconscious interference. Materials & Methods: The samples of 20 to 30 years were presented with affective and non-affective visual stimuli on the computer for one millisecond only. Results: Results showed a significant difference between the recognition of affective and non-affective visual stimuli. Also, the spiritual and religious stimuli in comparison to other stimuli were significant as affective visual stimuli. Therefore the effectiveness of visual stimuli was an important variable. The results indicated a significant difference between males and females for recognizing non-affective visual stimuli. Conclusion: It seems that inhibition in the subjects to recognize the affective visual stimuli could be due to inhibition in the retrieval processing in-memory system. According to results, males were better than females on the recall of prose passage details after listening to a single spoken presentation. This could also be related to the fact that males process faster and at a more superficial level than females.

Keywords

• affective visual stimuli
• gender difference
• non-affective visual stimuli
• unconscious