Submission 489
Defining Temporal and Methodological Parameters for Subliminal Priming in Touch
Posterwall-49
Presented by: Mrunal Chavan
Subliminal Priming is a phenomenon where a stimulus is presented below the threshold of conscious awareness, and sub-conscious primes influence the responses to later suprathreshold targets. Research in vision has established robust temporal windows for Positive Compatibility Effects (PCE) at short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) and Negative Compatibility Effects at longer SOAs (Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998; Sumner, 2008), yet it is unknown whether and under what conditions does subliminal priming exists in touch. We ask what temporal window and what kind of stimuli are appropriate for tactile subliminal priming. We first implemented a masked prime-target paradigm with rhythmic vibrations delivered to the index fingers via two actuators. But we found the onset of rhythmic vibrations as subliminal primes required longer SOAs (>200 ms), compromising the priming effects, giving no reliable compatibility effects in reaction times or accuracy. Now we focus on single, brief primes that differ in carrier frequency (40 vs 240 Hz), targeting Meissner and Pacinian dominant channels respectively, combined with backward masking and SOAs below 180 ms. In a localization (left vs right) response-compatibility task, masked primes and clearly perceivable targets are mapped to motor responses (pedal presses), allowing to quantify frequency based PCE as a function of SOA. The project combines carefully calibrated individual thresholds for subliminal primes, where we found prime discrimination remained at chance level (50%), confirming that the primes were effectively subliminal. Ongoing study will identify frequency, masking, and SOA combinations that will allow us to investigate the research gap in tactile subliminal priming.