{"title":"No evidence for unconscious initiation and following of arithmetic rules: A replication study.","authors":"Amir Tal,Liad Mudrik","doi":"10.1037/xge0000622","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The field of consciousness studies has yielded various-sometimes contradicting-accounts regarding the function of consciousness, ranging from denying it has such function to claiming that any high-level cognitive function requires consciousness. Empirical findings supporting both accounts were reported, yet some of them have been recently revisited based on failures to replicate. Here, we aimed at replicating a remarkable finding reported by Ric and Muller (2012); participants were able to follow an unseen instruction, integrate it with a subsequently presented pair of unseen digits, and accordingly either add the digits (resulting in a priming effect), or simply represent them. This finding thus demonstrates unconscious task-switching, temporal integration (involving mental chaining), and arithmetic operation. Finding such high-level processes in the absence of awareness is of pivotal importance to our understanding of consciousness, as it challenges prominent theories in the field (e.g., the global neuronal workspace). Accordingly, in light of the self-correction wave in psychological science in general and in the field of consciousness studies in particular, we report here a preregistered replication aimed at testing the reproducibility of this finding, while also better controlling for subjects' awareness of both the instruction and the digits. Across two highly powered experiments, our results failed to replicate the original effect. We, therefore, conclude that the current evidence does not support the claim that arithmetic operations (specifically, addition) can be flexibly initiated without awareness, in line with the current arguments for a more limited scope of unconscious processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000622","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The field of consciousness studies has yielded various-sometimes contradicting-accounts regarding the function of consciousness, ranging from denying it has such function to claiming that any high-level cognitive function requires consciousness. Empirical findings supporting both accounts were reported, yet some of them have been recently revisited based on failures to replicate. Here, we aimed at replicating a remarkable finding reported by Ric and Muller (2012); participants were able to follow an unseen instruction, integrate it with a subsequently presented pair of unseen digits, and accordingly either add the digits (resulting in a priming effect), or simply represent them. This finding thus demonstrates unconscious task-switching, temporal integration (involving mental chaining), and arithmetic operation. Finding such high-level processes in the absence of awareness is of pivotal importance to our understanding of consciousness, as it challenges prominent theories in the field (e.g., the global neuronal workspace). Accordingly, in light of the self-correction wave in psychological science in general and in the field of consciousness studies in particular, we report here a preregistered replication aimed at testing the reproducibility of this finding, while also better controlling for subjects' awareness of both the instruction and the digits. Across two highly powered experiments, our results failed to replicate the original effect. We, therefore, conclude that the current evidence does not support the claim that arithmetic operations (specifically, addition) can be flexibly initiated without awareness, in line with the current arguments for a more limited scope of unconscious processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Experimental Psychology: General publishes articles describing empirical work that bridges the traditional interests of two or more communities of psychology. The work may touch on issues dealt with in JEP: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, JEP: Human Perception and Performance, JEP: Animal Behavior Processes, or JEP: Applied, but may also concern issues in other subdisciplines of psychology, including social processes, developmental processes, psychopathology, neuroscience, or computational modeling. Articles in JEP: General may be longer than the usual journal publication if necessary, but shorter articles that bridge subdisciplines will also be considered.