The research proposed here will apply modern information-processing techniques to compare subliminal presentation of a psychoanalytically- derived experimental message, found by Silverman to help enhance functioning with a scrambled version of that message (control stimulus). Measures of mood and performance on cognitive tasks will serve as dependent variables. Recent research has suggested that changes in mood may mediate SPA effects and other research has shown that mood is an important mediator of health and problem solving. This will be contrasted with a more direct test on adaptation, i.e., performance on a cognitive task. A position-discrimination task, repeated at the beginning, middle, and end of each experiment will assess threshold, and, therefore, level of awareness. It will also serve as a semantic priming task, contrasting semantic with position responding. This will allow for a comparison of the effects of non-dynamic words with those of a psychodynamically relevant message. Five studies are proposed. The first examines gender differences; the second compares unmasked stimuli below objective, below subjective, and above subjective thresholds; the third and fourth do the same for binocularly and dichoptically-masked stimule; the fifth examines the effects of level of arousal. This work may help to integrate psychoanalytic and information-processing conceptions of non-conscious processes. Such an integration has potentially enormous health implications as both posit strong links between non-conscious processes and maladaptive (as well as adaptive) functioning. Relating non-conscious processes to mood has similar implications as mood has also been strongly related to health.
