Using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), recent experiments have demonstrated a strong and automatic positive evaluation of White Americans and a relatively negative evaluation of African Americans. Interpretations of this finding as revealing pro-White attitudes rest critically on tests of alternative interpretations, the most obvious one being perceivers ’ greater familiarity with stimuli representing White Americans. The reported experiment demonstrated that positive attributes were more strongly associated with White than Black Americans even when (a) pictures of equally unfamiliar Black and White individuals were used as stimuli and (b) differences in stimulus familiarity were statistically controlled. This experiment indicates that automatic race associations captured by the IAT are not compromised by stimulus familiarity, which in turn strengthens the conclusion that the IAT measures automatic evaluative associations. © 2000 Academic Press National surveys indicate that racism in American society has declined steadily over the past 50 years (Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1997). Despite this

We propose a computational theory of consciousness and model data from three experiments in visual perception. The central idea of our theory is that the contents of consciousness correspond to temporally stable states in an interconnected network of specialized computational modules. Each module incorporates a relaxation search that is concerned with achieving semantically well-formed states. We claim that being an attractor of the relaxation search is a necessary condition for awareness. We show that the model provides sensible explanations for the results of three experiments, and makes testable predictions. The first experiment (Marcel, 1980) found that masked, ambiguous prime words facilitate lexical decision for targets related to either prime meaning, whereas consciously perceived primes facilitate only the meaning that is consistent with prior context. The second experiment (Fehrer and Raab, 1962) found that subjects can make detection responses in constant time to simple visual stimuli regardless of whether they are consciously perceived or masked by metacontrast and not consciously perceived. The third experiment (Levy and Pashler, 1996) found that visual word recognition accuracy is lower than baseline when an earlier speeded response was incorrect, and higher than baseline when the early response was correct, consistent with a causal relationship between conscious perception and subsequent processing.

. In unconscious semantic priming, an unidentifiable visually masked word (the prime) facilitates semantic classification of a following visible related word (the target). Three experiments here provide evidence that masked primes are analyzed mainly at the level of word parts, not wholeword meaning. In Experiment 1, masked nonword primes composed of subword fragments of earlierviewed targets functioned as effective evaluative primes. (For example, after repeated classification of the targets angel and warm, the nonword anrm acted as an evaluatively positive masked prime.) Experiment 2 showed that this part-word processing was potent enough to oppose analysis at the whole word level. Thus, smile functioned as an evaluatively negative (!) masked prime after repeated classification of smut and bile. Experiment 3 found no priming when masked word primes contained no parts of earlier targets. These results suggest that robust unconscious priming (a) is driven by analysis of part-word infor...

Subjects classified visible 2-digit numbers as larger or smaller than 55. Target numbers were preceded by masked 2-digit primes that were either congruent (same relation to 55) or incongruent. Experiments 1 and 2 showed prime congruency effects for stimuli never included in the set of classified visible targets, indicating subliminal priming based on long-term semantic memory. Experiments 2 and 3 went further to demonstrate paradoxical unconscious priming effects resulting from task context. For example, after repeated practice classifying 73 as larger than 55, the novel masked prime 37 paradoxically facilitated the “larger ” response. In these experiments task context could induce subjects to unconsciously process only the leftmost masked prime digit, only the rightmost digit, or both independently. Across 3 experiments, subliminal priming was governed by both task context and long-term semantic memory. This research started by asking how much semantic analysis occurs unconsciously in response to visually masked numbers. Experiment 1 set out specifically to resolve a discrepancy between two recently reported findings. When it became apparent that Experiment 1’s methods could address additional interesting questions about subliminal priming, those additional questions became

Somebody once asked “Why is it that when people say ‘that’s a good question ’ they never have a good answer?” In response to the query of how we came to do this work, “good question ” was indeed our own response, and as such we cannot promise to have a good answer. In spite of the irony that this exercise poses for us, who insist on a healthy distrust of introspective analysis, in this article we hope to communicate the many pleasures of our collaborative effort, the degree to which we are indebted to our critics, and the recognition that the larger understanding of implicit social cognition involves many others who constitute an integral part of this discovery. A Brief History The origins of the work chosen for this issue lie in

Semantic priming by visually masked, unidentifiable (“subliminal”) words occurs robustly when the words appearing as masked primes have been classified earlier in practice as visible targets. It has been argued (Damian, 2001) that practice enables robust subliminal priming by automatizing learned associations between words and the specific motor responses used to classify them. Two experiments demonstrate that, instead, the associations formed in practice that underlie subliminal priming are between words and semantic categories. Visible words classified as pleasant or unpleasant in practice with one set of response key assignments functioned later as subliminal primes with appropriate valence, even when associations of keys with valences were reversed before the test. This result shows that subliminal priming involves unconscious categorization of the prime, rather than just the automatic activation of a practiced stimulus–response mapping.

this article should be addressed to R. L. Abrams, Psychology Department , University of Washington, Box 351525, Seattle, WA 98195-1525 (e-mail: rlabrams@u.washington.edu)

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Using an explicit task cuing paradigm, we tested whether masked cues can trigger task set activation, which would suggest that unconsciously presented stimuli can impact cognitive control processes. Based on a critical assessment of previous findings on the priming of task set activation, we present two experiments with a new method to approach this subject. Instead of using a prime, we varied the visibility of the cue. These cues either directly signaled particular tasks in Experiment 1, or certain task transitions (i.e. task repetitions or switches) in Experiment 2. While both masked task and transition cues affected task choice, only task cues affected the speed of task performance. This observation suggests that taskspecific stimulus-response rules can be activated only by masked cues that are uniquely associated with a particular task. Taken together, these results demonstrate that unconsciously presented stimuli have the power to activate corresponding task sets. (147 words)

Using a sandwich-masked priming paradigm with faces, we report two ERP effects that appear to reflect different levels of subliminal face processing. These two ERP repetition effects dissociate in their onset, scalp topography, and sensitivity to face familiarity. The “early ” effect occurred between 100 and 150 ms, was maximally negative-going over lateral temporoparietal channels, and was found for both familiar and unfamiliar faces. The “late ” effect occurred between 300 and 500 ms, was maximally positive-going over centroparietal channels, and was found only for familiar faces. The early effect resembled our previous fMRI data from the same paradigm; the late effect resembled the behavioural priming found, in the form of faster reaction times to make fame judgments about primed relative to unprimed familiar faces. None of the ERP or behavioural effects appeared explicable by a measure of participants ’ ability to see the primes. The ERP and behavioural effects showed some sensitivity to whether the same or a