Table_1_Emotion in Chinese Words Could Not Be Extracted in Continuous Flash Suppression.XLSX

Previous studies have demonstrated the automatic vigilance effect for faces and pictures and have attributed it to the brain’s prioritized unconscious evaluation of early evolutionary stimuli that are critical to survival. Whether this effect exists for evolutionarily more recent stimuli, such as written words, has become the center of much debate. Apparently contradicting results have been reported in different languages, such as Hebrew, English, and Traditional Chinese (TC), with regard to the unconscious processing of emotional words in breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS). Our current study used two experiments (with two-character words or single-character words) to verify whether the emotional valence or the length of Simplified Chinese (SC) words would modulate conscious access in b-CFS. We failed to replicate the findings reported in Yang and Yeh (2011) using TC, but found that complex high-level emotional information could not be extracted from interocularly suppressed words regardless of their length. Our findings comply with the distinction between subliminal and preconscious states in Global Neuronal Workspace Theory and support the current notion that preconsciousness or partial awareness may be indispensable for high-level cognitive tasks such as reading comprehension.

既往研究已证实面孔与图片存在自动警觉效应，并将其归因于大脑对生存至关重要的早期进化刺激所开展的优先无意识评估。此类效应是否适用于进化历程中出现较晚的刺激（如书面文字），已成为学界广泛争论的核心议题。针对不同语言（如希伯来语、英语及繁体中文（Traditional Chinese, TC））的情绪词汇在打破连续闪烁抑制（breaking Continuous Flash Suppression, b-CFS）范式下的无意识加工研究，已报告了看似相互矛盾的实验结果。本研究通过两项实验（分别采用双字词与单字词作为实验材料），旨在验证简体中文（Simplified Chinese, SC）词汇的情绪效价与词长是否会调节其在b-CFS范式下的意识通达性。本研究未能重复Yang与Yeh（2011）针对繁体中文所报告的实验发现，但观察到无论词长如何，均无法从双眼抑制的词汇中提取复杂的高级情绪信息。本研究结果契合全局神经元工作空间理论（Global Neuronal Workspace Theory）中阈下状态与前意识状态的区分，并支持当前学界观点：前意识或部分意识或许是阅读理解等高级认知任务不可或缺的基础。