It is long, but surely convincing. This why I haven't given up hope.
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Nonconscious acquisition of information.
Am Psychol. 1992 Jun;47(6):766-79
Lewicki P, Hill T, Czyzewska M.
University of Tulsa, OK 74104-3189.
The authors review and summarize evidence for the process of acquisition of information outside of conscious awareness (covariations, nonconscious indirect and interactive inferences, self-perpetuation of procedural knowledge). Data indicate that as compared with consciously controlled cognition, the nonconscious information-acquisition processes are not only much faster but are also structurally more sophisticated, in that they are capable of efficient processing of multidimensional and interactive relations between variables. Those mechanisms of nonconscious acquisition of information provide a major channel for the development of procedural knowledge that is indispensable for such important aspects of cognitive functioning as encoding and interpretation of stimuli and the triggering of emotional reactions.
Nonconscious indirect inferences in encoding.
J Exp Psychol Gen 1994 Sep;123(3):257-63
Lewicki P, Hill T, Czyzewska M.
Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104.
Indirect (transitive) inference (i.e., if A is related to B, and B is related to C, then C is related to A) is a ubiquitous component of thinking and reasoning. This research demonstrates that a mechanism at least functionally similar to drawing indirect inferences can also be observed in unintentional processes of encoding. The 2 studies followed the same design and used modified versions of procedures tested in previous research on nonconscious information processing (P. Lewicki, T. Hill, & M. Czyzewska, 1992). In the first learning phase, Ss acquired an encoding algorithm relating Variables A and B. In the second learning phase, Variable A was removed from the material and replaced with Variable C, allowing Ss to acquire the second encoding algorithm (relating B and C). Consistent with the original studies, Ss were not aware that there were any consistencies in the material. In the testing phase material, Variable B was removed, and Ss were asked to make intuitive judgments regarding Variable A. The data from both experiments confirmed the expectation that Ss would implicitly draw indirect inferences (A on the basis of C). This process is discussed as one of the mechanisms that may trigger the development of various components of procedural knowledge.
Hidden covariation detection: a fundamental and ubiquitous phenomenon.
Lewicki P, Hill T, Czyzewska M.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 1997 Jan;23(1):221-8
Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104, USA.
H. Hendrickx, J. De Houwer, F. Baeyens, P. Eelen, and E. Van Avermaet (1997) reported a series of (mostly unsuccessful) studies on nonconscious hidden covariation detection (HCD); for example, they reported that out of 3 attempts to replicate P. Lewicki et al.'s studies, only 1 produced the expected results. They concluded that HCD may be not as general and robust as the previous research suggested, and they considered boundary conditions. In this article, the authors discuss a number of weaknesses of H. Hendrickx et al.'s experiments (and systematic deviations from the original methodology) that are potentially responsible for the lack of the expected results and discuss missing facts in their arguments (e.g., they failed to mention any published replications of the HCD studies from other than the present authors' laboratories). It is argued that when all evidence is considered, the proper conclusion is that nonconscious processing of covariations is not only general and robust but also a ubiquitous phenomenon mediating a variety of processes of acquisition of information.
On the status of nonconscious processes in human cognition: comment on Reber.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 1989 Sep;118(3):242-4
Lewicki P, Hill T.
Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104.
Two issues are discussed. The first one pertains to the generality of the nonconscious learning processes and their somewhat paradoxical status in cognitive psychology. We argue that the ability of the human cognitive system to nonconsciously acquire complex knowledge structures is one of its elementary and indispensable properties. Moreover, the existence of this ability constitutes one of the necessary metatheoretical assumptions of contemporary cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, the contemporary cognitive psychology literature often implies that it is only one of many controversial and unusual phenomena. The second issue pertains to the distinction between the so-called primitive unconscious and the sophisticated unconscious as proposed by Reber (1989).
Isolating unconscious influences: the neutral parameter procedure.
Vinter A, Perruchet P.
Q J Exp Psychol A 1999 Nov;52(4):857-75
University of Bourgogne, Dijon, France. vinter@satie.u-bourgogne.fr
Earlier demonstrations of unconscious learning have been regularly challenged. In this paper, we suggest that earlier demonstrations were not compelling due to certain properties of the experimental situations, and notably that conscious exploitation of explicit knowledge, if present, would coincide or conflict with the results of unconscious processing. We designed a method consisting of inducing a neutral behavioural change in the way subjects drew geometric figures. Two experiments showed that important and long-lasting modifications of drawing behaviour were obtained following specially devised practice, although these modifications could not be expected from deliberate adaptive strategies. In addition, we showed that subjects were unaware of the manipulation to which they had been exposed. The study provides striking evidence for unconscious learning and offers insights for the design of suitable new tools to investigate unconscious cognition.
Unconscious processing in memory recall. A study of three amnesic patients.
Cortex 1993 Mar;29(1):25-43
Lhermitte F, Serdaru M.
Clinique de Neurologie et de Neuropsychologie, Hopital de la Salpetriere, Paris.
The sudden resurgence of precise information some time after the failure of its recall (memory block) suggests the intervention of unconscious processes. In normal subjects the experimental demonstration of such processes meets with methodological snags. They are avoided in patients with a pure amnesic syndrome because retrograde amnesia produces many instances of missing memories, while anterograde amnesia prevents the patient from consciously thinking about it. Three patients with a pure amnesic syndrome were submitted to 4 interviews over 12 days on 3 topics concerning places and itineraries that were very familiar before the disease, and a shocking event of their life. Retrieved memories were compared to those of normal matched subjects. The results showed a dramatic increase for memories of places and itineraries over sessions, and the absence of improvement of autobiographical memories. These findings underline the role of the activation of unconscious processes in recall and the different status of semantic and episodic memory.
Unconscious learning during anaesthesia.
Anaesthesia. 1993 Mar;48(3):275
Jelicic M, De Roode A, Bovill JG, Bonke B.
Department of Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Forty-three surgical patients were, during general anaesthesia, presented (via headphones) with either statements about common facts of some years ago (group A), or new verbal associations, i.e. the names of fictitious, nonfamous people (group B). None had any recall of intra-operative events. In a postoperative test of indirect memory, patients in group A answered more questions about the 'common facts' correctly than those in group B (p < 0.005), which reflects the activation of pre-existing knowledge. Furthermore, patients in group B designated more 'nonfamous names' as famous (thus falsely attributing fame) than patients in group A (p < 0.001), which demonstrates that information-processing during anaesthesia can also take place as unconscious learning.
The effects of conscious and subconscious processing of hostility- or friendliness-related words on the personality impression of others].
: Shinrigaku Kenkyu 1989 Apr;60(1):38-44 [Article in Japanese]
Ikegami T, Kawaguchi J.
Aichi University of Education.
Four experiments were conducted to investigate how the prior processing of trait relevant information influenced upon the impression formation. Twenty university students participated in each experiment. First subjects performed a cognitive task in which they processed hostility (Exp. I, II) or friendliness (Exp. III, IV) related words, consciously (Exp. I, III) or subconsciously (Exp. II, IV). In another ostensibly unrelated task, subjects rated a stimulus person on several trait scales based on an ambiguous behavioral description, regarding to hostility (Exp. I, II) or friendliness (Exp. III, IV). It was shown that the more hostility words subjects processed either consciously or subconsciously, the more extreme and negative ratings they yielded. As for friendliness words, however, such effects were found only when they were subconsciously processed, not when they were consciously processed. It was argued that conscious processing was affected by positiveness or negativeness of trait words, but subconscious processing was not.
Unconscious processing of dichoptically masked words.
Mem Cognit. 1990 Jul;18(4):428-9
Greenwald AG, Klinger MR, Liu TJ.
In three experiments, the subjects' task was to decide whether each of a series of words connoted something good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (stress, detest, malaria). One-half second before the presentation of each such target word, an evaluatively polarized priming word was presented briefly to the nondominant eye and was masked dichoptically by either the rapidly following (Experiment 1) or simultaneous (Experiments 2 and 3) presentation of a random letter-fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (The effectiveness of the masking procedure was demonstrated by the subjects' inability to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In all experiments, significant masked priming effects were obtained; evaluative decisions to congruent masked prime-target combinations (such as a positive masked prime followed by a positive target) were significantly faster than those to incongruent (e.g., negative prime/positive target) or noncongruent (e.g., neutral prime/positive target) combinations. Also, in two of the three experiments, when subjects were at chance accuracy in discriminating word position, their position judgments were nevertheless significantly influenced by the irrelevant semantic content (LEFT vs. RIGHT) of the masked position-varying words. The series of experiments demonstrated that two very different tasks--speeded judgment of evaluative meaning and nonspeeded judgment of word position--yielded statistically significant and replicable influences of the semantic content of apparently undetectable words. Coupled with previous research by others using the lexical decision task, these findings converge in establishing the reliability of the empirical phenomenon of semantic processing of words that are rendered undetectable by dichoptic pattern masking.
Evidence of unconscious semantic processing from a forced error situation.
Br J Psychol 1984 Aug;75 ( Pt 3):305-14
Groeger JA.
A study was carried out to determine whether subjects extracted information from words presented below their recognition and awareness thresholds. A series of target words was used to generate the word matrix, which was a set of 24 words related to the target in specified ways. Following subthreshold exposure of a target word, subjects chose the word they thought had been shown from the word matrix for that particular target. It was held that the alternative chosen was a function of the type of processing the target was receiving. Results showed that structural analysis of the target predominated below recognition threshold, whereas semantic analysis predominated below awareness threshold.
