Visual processing out of awareness

Abstract

The current experiment was designed to find a possible common denominator between the target and distractor that causes a subliminal influence on behavior. The color of a stimulus was suppressed by visual backward masking to find out what influence it would have on the global effect compared to other conditions, such as different suppressed colors or supraliminal conditions. Observers were told to make fast eye-movements to a stimulus target to be assured of a global effect in the baseline condition. The subliminal conditions did have a specific influence on the saccades; they decreased saccade latency and increased the global effect. The observers did not process the surface color of the subliminal stimulus as no significant difference between subliminal conditions has been found in this study.