Psychology Research Rahnev, D. A., Huang, E., Lau, H. (2012). Subliminal stimuli in the near absence of attention influence top-down cognitive control. Atten Percept Psychophys (2012) 74:521-532

This particular research article is purposed to show that there is the possibility of preparing cognitive control devoid of laying emphasis on top-down attention. This particular study undertook four different experiments, but the main hypothesis of the study is that subliminal stimuli outside of the focus of attention can influence higher-order cognitive functions.

The method of the research study included four different experiments. The participants of the first experiment included twenty one undergraduate students, all from the University of Columbia, aged between 18-30 years. Ten of them were men and the rest were women. The second experiment included 4 men and 6 women between 18 -27 years. For the third experiment, there were nine students; five of them women and the rest men aged between 18-30 years. The last experiment included 9 students; three of them women and six of them men between the ages 20 and 39 years. For every hour of involvement, they were reimbursed 10 dollars. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and had signed up an informed consent declaration. Some of the materials used in the study include: circles, a computer monitor, Psychophysics Toolbox and MATLAB software....

In each of the experiments, the participants were requested to focus on the movement of the general motion of the dots in the cued disregard, and to neglect and ignore the motion in the uncued diagonal.
The methods of the study encompassed investigating the impact of subliminal stimuli on greater cognitive processes in the proximate nonexistence of spatial attention. The results of the study showed that moving of the dates, which translates to external stimuli originating from the attentive focus, could impact task groundwork and implementation, one of the utmost sorts of cognitive control acknowledged to rely on the prefrontal cortex.

One of the limitations I have observed and that could possibly impact the results of the study is the change of the different participants. This lack of consistency can have an effect in the results obtained. In accordance to the authors, the limitation perceived lack of spatial attention for the uncued stimuli in our experiment. They considered the uncued stimuli to be weak and unrelated to the study and therefore neglected them.

In conclusion, the take home message from this experiment is that immaterial motion patches existing in the uncued spatial locations also impacted task performance.

Article 2: Mulckhuyse, M., Talsma, D., Theeuwes, J. (2007). Grabbing attention without knowing: Automatic capture of attention by subliminal…