This research examines the capabilities and limitations of cognition initiated by visual 'subliminal' stimuli. These are visual stimuli presented so as to evade conscious attention. The proposed research gives special attention to types of subliminal presentations that are now easily achievable in the mass media of TV and film. Since the mid-1950s, broad and generally unsubstantiated claims of effective therapeutic or other influence by visual subliminal stimuli have appeared in popular press, entertainment media, and marketplace. Until the mid-1980s, scientific evaluation of those claims was severely restricted by scientists' studied avoidance of the topic because of its air of disreputability, and by unavailability of research methods that could decisively evaluate claims. Previous work on this project has contributed to overcoming both of these constraints. The proposed research carries forward these gains by (a) testing for possible cumulative effects of several types of repeated subliminal visual presentations, (b) applying methods developed in the project's previous studies of subliminal text stimuli to test for effects of subliminal graphic/pictorial stimuli, (c) locating the currently elusive upper bound of analytic capability of cognition in response to subliminal stimuli, (d) extending the project's methods for appraising the time course of cognitive processing of subliminal stimuli to supraliminal stimuli, (e) seeking to reconcile competing published claims concerning temporal persistence of effects of subliminal visual stimuli, and (f) developing a diagnostic procedure that can provide comparative appraisal of theorized attitude conditioning procedures.
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