The Validity of d′ Measures

Subliminal perception occurs when prime stimuli that participants claim not to be aware of nevertheless influence subsequent processing of a target. This claim, however, critically depends on correct methods to assess prime awareness. Typically, d′ (“d prime”) tasks administered after a priming task are used to establish that people are unable to discriminate between different primes. Here, we show that such d′ tasks are influenced by the nature of the target, by attentional factors, and by the delay between stimulus presentation and response. Our results suggest that the standard d′ task is not a straightforward measure of prime visibility. We discuss the implications of our findings for subliminal perception research.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  PLoS ONE

• Publication date

  2012-02-20

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0031595PMID 22363682PMCID 3282731
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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