| P · prime | a masked, consciously invisible prime word/number |
| T · target | a subsequent target requiring a response |
| B · baseline | response to an incongruent or neutral prime |
| E · priming effect | faster congruent responses and measurable brain activation despite the prime being unseen |
| A · association | congruent/incongruent |
phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | masked semantic priming of number comparison— “Visual words that are masked and presented so briefly that they cannot be seen may nevertheless facilitate the subsequent processing of related words, a phenomenon called masked priming1,2.” | |
| claim-type | existence— “A stream of perceptual, semantic and motor processes can therefore occur without awareness.” | |
| method — evidence | — “Here we use a combination of behavioural and brain-imaging techniques to estimate the depth of processing of masked numerical primes.” | |
| transfer | from event-related potential electrophysiology: the lateralized readiness potential, an ERP measure of covert motor preparation, rebuilt in the haemodynamic signal and renamed the lateralized BOLD response— “We therefore extracted the fMRI signal profile from the left and right motor cortices, and used it to derive an index of lateralized motor activation analogous to the LRP, the lateralized bold response (LBR; Fig. 5).” | transfers[0] |
| builds-on | studies of masked-face modulation of amygdala activity (refs 11, 12: Whalen et al. 1998; Morris, Öhman & Dolan 1998)— “This concurs with the observation of a modulation of amygdala activity by masked visual faces11,12.” | claim_relations[0] |
| builds-on | prior imaging of unconscious cerebral processing (refs 13, 14: Berns, Cohen & Mintun 1997; Sahraie et al. 1997)— “As shown previously13,14, brain imaging now has the potential to image unconscious cerebral processing.” | claim_relations[1] |
| sense | THE INVISIBLE PRIME APPLIES THE TASK INSTRUCTIONS, WHICH IS A STRONGER CLAIM THAN SEMANTIC ACTIVATION. `the interference between prime and target can be attributed to a covert, prime-induced activation of motor cortex, a response bias that must be overcome in incongruent trials. This indicates that the prime was unconsciously processed according to task instructions, all the way down to the motor system.` The unseen numeral was compared to 5 and a hand was prepared. Most masked-priming records in this corpus argue about whether MEANING was reached; this one argues that a RULE was executed on something nobody saw— “We then showed that the interference between prime and target can be attributed to a covert, prime-induced activation of motor cortex, a response bias that must be overcome in incongruent trials. This indicates that the prime was unconsciously processed according to task instructions, all the way down to the motor system” | senses[0] |
| sense | AND THE CONTROL ANSWERS THE OBJECTION THAT WEAKENED AN EARLIER RESULT IN THIS SAME CORPUS: `the entire response time distribution was shifted by ~24 ms in incongruent trials compared with congruent trials. Thus, there was no evidence that the effect was found in only A small proportion of subjects or A small number of trials with a distinct distribution of response times.` buchner2003 - tagged three records ago - reports that Driver & Baylis's cross-modal effect `was observed only for a small subgroup of 14 (out of 24) participants`, which `leaves some uncertainty as to the reality` of it. This paper pre-empts exactly that, with a distributional argument rather than an average, and reports that all 12 subjects showed the effect— “Furthermore, the entire response time distribution was shifted by ,24 ms in incongruent trials compared with congruent trials. Thus, there was no evidence that the effect was found in only a small proportion of subjects or a small number of trials with a distinct distribution of response times” | senses[1] |
| sense | THE WHOLE PROCESSING CHAIN IS PLACED OUTSIDE AWARENESS IN ONE SENTENCE: `A stream of perceptual, semantic and motor processes can therefore occur without awareness.` Three stages, named in order, and the claim is that none of them requires consciousness. That is the sentence the rest of this corpus's masked-priming records are arguing with - Holcomb2005 asks whether the N400 stage is automatic, Huang2018 restricts affective primacy to face stimuli, Kouider2008 asks about levels of processing. Here all three levels are claimed at once, from a single 43 ms numeral— “A stream of perceptual, semantic and motor processes can therefore occur without awareness” | senses[2] |
| control | the number-comparison task performed twice by every subject, in counterbalanced order — held — rules out an order effect between the two runs, and between-subject differences, at once - each subject does both and the order is balanced across them— “Subjects performed the number-comparison task twice in counterbalanced order.” | controls[0] |
| effect direction | prime —causes→ motor cortex — increases— “We then showed that the interference between prime and target can be attributed to a covert, prime-induced activation of motor cortex, a response bias that must be overcome in incongruent trials” | concept_edges[0] |
| note | prime —causes→ motor cortex — THE PAPER'S CENTRAL CLAIM AND ITS MOST SURPRISING ONE: an unreportable stimulus produces measurable motor activation. 'covert' and 'can be attributed to' are both in the quote - the motor activation is measured, and its attribution to the prime is the inference. Weight 0.9 rather than 0.95 for that second half. | concept_edges[0] |
| weight | prime —causes→ motor cortex — 0.9 Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[0] |
| outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation) | control — held | controls[0] |
| evidence status note | sense — the staged text carries a COMPARISON/APPROXIMATION OPERATOR REPLACED BY PUNCTUATION: the paper's “~24 ms” is staged as “,24 ms”. Not a spurious space and not a reversal - the character is REPLACED and the result is still grammatical, so it reads as a stray comma rather than as damage. Settled from the paper's own preceding sentence, which gives “average 24 ms, s.d. 13.5 ms”, and the same paragraph carries “(P , 0:0001)” for “P < 0.0001”. The tag's own label already reads “~24 ms”, so the reading was right and only the evidence is damaged; the quote is verbatim against the staged text and no re-slice avoids the character. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | senses[1] |
| replication | untested | |
| limitation | ERP localisation of the covert priming effect is spatially imprecise, which is why fMRI was added Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[0] |
| limitation | The haemodynamic measure is too coarse to resolve the small activation delays produced by masked priming Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[1] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | the unseen prime modulates brain activation and congruent responses Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[1] |
| key-terms | masked priming, unconscious, semantic, activation, congruent, prime, motor |
| concept | prime — not defined in this paper's own words; a numeral flashed for 43 ms between two masks, which subjects could neither report nor tell from a nonsense string - and which is nevertheless compared to 5 and used to prepare a hand Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[3] |
| concept | motor cortex — not defined in this paper's own words; THE DEPTH THE CLAIM REACHES. The prime does not merely activate a meaning - it produces a measurable response bias in motor cortex that the correct answer must then overcome Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[4] |
| concept | awareness — not defined in this paper's own words; what is absent, and the paper's summary sentence puts the whole processing chain outside it: perception, meaning and action, none of them requiring it Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[5] |
| effect-size d | Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[0] |
| evidence status note | effect-size — THE MATHS LAYER OF THE STAGED TEXT WAS MOJIBAKE AND HAS BEEN REPAIRED. This paper's extraction rendered '=' as U+00BC (the vulgar fraction one quarter) and '+' as U+00FE (thorn), so the quote read 'p ¼ 0.01' where the paper says 'p = 0.01'. It passed every check we own, because the staged text said the same wrong thing: the offsets were right and the recorded hash of the staged text matched. Repaired only where the character stands in an operator's place - spaced, with a number after it - because the same U+00BC is a REAL QUARTER in six other papers ('a ¼ inch condenser microphone'). Original in evidence as extracted, pre-repair file in an internal file. QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted. Correction, 18 September 2026: only '=' and '+' were repaired. In this quote the ':' in 'P = 0:0027' is a decimal point (P = 0.0027) and still prints wrongly. | content_tags.statistics[0] |
| false-discovery-rate FDR | as written: multiple comparisons Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[1] |
| evidence status note | false-discovery-rate — QUOTE REPAIRED: the extractor split a unicode and the quote was recorded faithfully with the damage in it, which made it unanchorable. The repaired string is an EXACT SUBSTRING of the staged text - that is why it was accepted, not because a rule produced it. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted. | content_tags.statistics[1] |
| mean μ | as written: average of Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[2] |
| not machine-vouched | mean — not-in-our-copy - The quote is in the original web page we fetched for this paper, but not in the text we tag against, which was extracted differently. Checked with ligatures, hyphens, spacing and punctuation set aside. | content_tags.statistics[2] |
| t-test t | as written: t-tests Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[3] |
| evidence status note | t-test — QUOTE REPAIRED: the extractor split a all and the quote was recorded faithfully with the damage in it, which made it unanchorable. The repaired string is an EXACT SUBSTRING of the staged text - that is why it was accepted, not because a rule produced it. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted. | content_tags.statistics[3] |
When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.
Tag layer © the Meta-Tagging Project, CC BY 4.0. The paper text is © its authors/publisher
and is linked, not reproduced. Excerpts shown are short quotations for identification and verification.
· back to index
· concepts · authors
· עברית
© 2026 Shir Sivroni · ORCID 0009-0000-2597-2824