Abstract
To demonstrate unconscious cognition, researchers commonly compare a direct measure (D) of awareness for a critical stimulus with an indirect measure (I) showing that the stimulus was cognitively processed at all. We discuss and empirically demonstrate three types of dissociation with distinct appearances inD-I plots, in which direct and indirect effects are plotted against each other in a shared effect size metric. Simple dissociations betweenD andI occur whenI has some nonzero value andD is at chance level; the traditional requirement of zero awareness is necessary for this criterion only.Sensitivity dissociations only require thatI be larger thanD; double dissociations occur when some experimental manipulation has opposite effects onI andD. We show that double dissociations require much weaker measurement assumptions than do other criteria. Several alternative approaches can be considered special cases of our framework.
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Part of this work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant Schm1671/1-1 to T.S.
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Schmidt, T., Vorberg, D. Criteria for unconscious cognition: Three types of dissociation. Perception & Psychophysics 68, 489–504 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193692
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193692