Instructed illiteracy reveals expertise-effects on unconscious processing

Abstract

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We used a new methodological approach to investigate whether top-down influences like expertise determine the extent of unconscious processing. This approach does not rely on preexisting differences between experts and novices, but instructs essentially the same task in a way that either addresses a domain of expertise or not. Participants either were instructed to perform a lexical decision task (expert task) or to respond to a combination of single features of word and non-word stimuli (novel task). We analyzed congruency effects of masked primes depending on the instructed task. Participants performing the expert task responded faster and less error prone when the prime was response congruent rather than incongruent. This effect was significantly reduced in the novel task, and even reversed when excluding identical prime-target pairs. This demonstrates an expertise-based top-down modulation of unconscious processing that cannot be explained by confounds that are otherwise inherent in comparisons between novices and experts.

Keywords

• Expertise
• masked priming
• Top-down control
• lexical decision task
• unconscious processing