The same-different task as a tool to study unconscious processing

Van Opstal · Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · 2021 · cognitive-psychology · 10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.06.014 · record van-opstal2021-the-same-different-task-as-a-tool
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. An opinion/review piece: the contribution is a proposal about how to run the experiment, hence claim type 'method' with method 'review'. Only ONE claim_relation could be recorded honestly: nearly all prior work is cited by bracketed number rather than by name, and rule 7 forbids inferring a relation from a bare citation, so the many works it builds on ([15], [18], [21], [45] etc.) are left out. Replication status 'replicated' follows the paper's own statement that the letter-prime/number-target effect was replicated within the original study and extended to other stimuli and modalities. The second limitation is stated about a study the review relies on (the two-word version of the task), which is this review's own evidence base. Two-column extraction has scrambled some sentences (e.g. one begins 'reliably Why unconscious found in the subliminal SD task'), and those were avoided rather than tidied. 2026-08-17 schema-0.3 pass: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.
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Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 6 concept tags on this paper, all 6 are grounded in a quoted sentence. All carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.
subliminal priming prime targets primes criteria same-different A generic same-different algorithm is applied unconsciously to the prime pair whatever its format, and the response it evokes then facilitates or interferes with the response demanded by the conscious target pair. If 'same' judgments are holistic and parallel while 'different' judgments are serial, then global-workspace theory predicts that only the parallel 'same' route can run without conscious access, so priming should come from same primes. Unconscious integration succeeds in this task because the stimuli fall within a sufficiently small spatial (and temporal) window and are of limited complexity. subliminal same-different (SD) task information integration review

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relation to other workclaim_relationshow this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim typeclaim_typethe shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edgeconcept_edgesan asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
conceptconceptsan idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tagcontent_tagsa finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
limitationlimitationswhat the paper says its evidence cannot support
mechanismmechanismshow the reported effect is said to come about
methodmethodhow the paper produced its evidence
phenomenonphenomenonthe effect or regularity under study
sensesensesa distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it

The paper

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Every tag on this page

claim_relations 1 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 6 · content_tags 15 · limitations 2 · mechanisms 3 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 3

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facettagfieldconf.whose words
claim_typemethod
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claim_typethe paper's words
phenomenonunconscious semantic processing and information integration
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phenomenonthe paper's words
methodreview
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also in: review
methodthe paper's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[0]the tagger's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[1]the tagger's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[2]the tagger's words
limitationsThe review cannot say why this task succeeds where other unconscious-integration designs are unreliable.
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limitations[0]the tagger's words
limitationsIn the word version of the task primes and targets were not cleanly separated, so part of that effect may be a conscious stimulus-response mapping.
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limitations[1]the tagger's words
conceptssubliminal priming
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concepts[0]0.95the paper's words
conceptsprime
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also in: prime
concepts[1]0.95the paper's words
conceptstargets
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also in: targets
concepts[2]0.95the paper's words
conceptsprimes
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also in: primes
concepts[3]0.95the paper's words
conceptscriteria
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also in: criteria
concepts[4]0.95the paper's words
conceptssame-different
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concepts[5]0.95the paper's words
sensessubliminal priming - an operational definition with a NUMBER in it: the prime is shown for 50 ms or less and immediately followed by masks, and awareness is treated as absent because of the timing. Set beside Hoewe2020, where unawareness is established by asking the participant afterwards, this is the same criterion secured by apparatus instead of by report
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senses[0]0.95the tagger's words
sensesgenuine unconscious processing - a term defined by what it must be distinguished FROM. The two criteria exist so that an effect cannot be attributed to the conscious preparation of response links, and to rule out visual similarity. The definition is a list of alternative explanations that have to be closed off
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senses[1]0.95the tagger's words
sensesthe same-different task, as a tool rather than a topic - what recommends it is a STRUCTURAL property: the judgement concerns the relation between two targets, so the primes can be drawn from an entirely different set and still bear on the response
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senses[2]0.95the tagger's words
claim_relationsextends → the dual process model of same-different judgements and the global neuronal workspace theory of consciousness
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claim_relations[0]the tagger's words
concept_edgescriteria —part-of→ subliminal priming
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strength of the relation: 0.85 · note: The first criterion, and its justification is the whole content: primes must come from a large or novel set SO THAT the effect cannot be attributed to consciously prepared response links. The rule is shaped by the alternative it excludes. Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its span and kept, but criteria for genuine unconscious processing; part-of is loose.
concept_edges[1]0.95the tagger's words
content_tagsColour same-different judgments were faster when two preceding invisible digit primes had the same relation.
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content_tags.findings[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe unconscious same-different priming effect is short-lived: it appeared at a 100 ms prime-target interval and was gone at 316 ms.
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content_tags.findings[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsBecause the prime set (Arabic digits) and target set (colour patches) had nothing in common, the effect cannot be attributed to visual overlap or to consciously prepared action triggers, the two standard objections to subliminal semantic priming.
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content_tags.findings[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsWhen the primes were an upper- and lower-case letter matched for visual similarity, the same-different judgment could only rest on letter identity, which the author treats as strong evidence for unconscious semantic processing.
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content_tags.findings[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe unconscious same-different judgment is context-relative: the pair 'a A' primed a 'same' response when surrounded by dissimilar primes but a 'different' response when surrounded by very similar primes.
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content_tags.findings[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsUnconscious multisensory integration occurred only when subjects had conscious training beforehand.
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content_tags.findings[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe subliminal version of the task reproduces the fast-same effect, in which 'same' responses are faster than 'different' responses.
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content_tags.findings[6]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe prediction that priming should be confined to 'same' primes is not borne out consistently: some experiments show priming only for same primes and others only for different primes.
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about this quote: DAMAGED GLYPHS IN THIS QUOTE: (cid:1). These are raw PDF font glyph indices that leaked out in place of the characters they stand for - usually a mathematical operator. The quote is verbatim to the staged text and its anchor is sound; the STAGED TEXT is what is damaged. NOT repaired: the cid-to-character mapping is defined by the font embedded in that particular PDF, so guessing it would produce a clean and unverifiable quote. Repair needs the source PDF and is a re-staging job.
content_tags.findings[7]the tagger's words
content_tagsWith pairs of emotional faces as primes the effect reversed sign, responses being slower when the prime relation matched the target relation.
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content_tags.findings[8]the tagger's words
content_tagssubliminal priming
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content_tags.definitions[0]the tagger's words
content_tagssubliminal same-different (SD) task
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content_tags.definitions[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsinformation integration
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content_tags.definitions[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsabout 10 ms — size of the subliminal same-different priming effect on reaction time
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content_tags.quantities[0]the tagger's words
content_tags100 ms / 316 ms — prime-target intervals at which the priming effect was present versus absent
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content_tags.quantities[1]the tagger's words
content_tags50 ms or less — prime duration below which participants have no awareness of the prime
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content_tags.quantities[2]the tagger's words

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