Testing Freud’s Hypothesis That Word Forms and Word Meaning Are Functionally Distinct: Subliminal Primary-Process Cognition and Its Link to Personality

Villa, Karen Klein; Shevrin, Howard; Snodgrass, Michael; Bazan, Ariane; Brakel, Linda A. W.

doi:10.1080/15294145.2006.10773521

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Apparently, an unconscious re-working of the respective stimulus is necessary to result in primary process transformations, and when processed supraliminally, stimuli are structurally submitted to an inhibitory defense process, which refrains, primary process treatment ( Freud, 1915/1959 ; see also Bazan, 2007a , b , 2017 ). The present findings are remarkable since main effects at the ODT are very rarely found ( Snodgrass et al, 1993 ; Klein Villa et al, 2006 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 44%

“…More recently, Roussillon has qualified the primary process as the locus of the “everything, all at once, all alone, all together, all in one” ( Roussillon, 2007 , p. 33). As concerns empirical evidence, in the team of Shevrin (1973) , Brakel et al (2000 , 2002 ) showed that primary process similarity judgment is based upon a commonality of attributes of the stimulus (elements with the same forms) and Shevrin and colleagues have shown that this is especially the case for linguistic attributes , such as common phoneme sequences (e.g., rebuses, see also Shevrin and Fisher, 1967 ; Klein Villa et al, 2006 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to the original study, we will work with shorter presentation times (1 ms instead 6 ms) and with experimental conditions controlled for stringent subliminality. Snodgrass and Shevrin (2006 ; see also Bazan, 2017 ) propose that only at these extreme conditions of subliminality one is able to tap directly into the dynamical unconscious as shown by different empirical studies (e.g., Klein Villa et al, 2006 ). If primary processes prevail during REM- and secondary processes during non-REM-sleep, we are to find more rebus associations upon REM-sleep awakenings and more conceptual associations to the stimulus material upon non-REM-sleep awakenings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Processing of a Subliminal Rebus during Sleep: Idiosyncratic Primary versus Secondary Process Associations upon Awakening from REM- versus Non-REM-Sleep

et al. 2017

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Primary and secondary processes are the foundational axes of the Freudian mental apparatus: one horizontally as a tendency to associate, the primary process, and one vertically as the ability for perspective taking, the secondary process. Primary process mentation is not only supposed to be dominant in the unconscious but also, for example, in dreams. The present study tests the hypothesis that the mental activity during REM-sleep has more characteristics of the primary process, while during non-REM-sleep more secondary process operations take place. Because the solving of a rebus requires the ability to non-contexually condensate the literal reading of single stimuli into a new one, rebus solving is a primary process operation by excellence. In a replication of the dream-rebus study of Shevrin and Fisher (1967), a rebus, which consisted of an image of a comb (German: “Kamm”) and an image of a raft (German: “Floß”), resulting in the German rebus word “kampflos” (Engl.: without a struggle), was flashed subliminally (at 1 ms) to 20 participants before going to sleep. Upon consecutive awakenings participants were asked for a dream report, free associations and an image description. Based on objective association norms, there were significantly more conceptual associations referring to Kamm and Floß indexing secondary process mentation when subjects were awakened from non-REM sleep as compared to REM-awakenings. There were not significantly more rebus associations referring to kampflos indexing primary process mentation when awakened from REM-sleep as compared to non-REM awakenings. However, when the associations were scored on the basis of each subject’s individual norms, there was a rebus effect with more idiosyncratic rebus associations in awakenings after REM than after non-REM-sleep. Our results support the general idea that REM-sleep is characterized by primary process thinking, while non-REM-sleep mentation follows the rules of the secondary process.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 44%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Processing of a Subliminal Rebus during Sleep: Idiosyncratic Primary versus Secondary Process Associations upon Awakening from REM- versus Non-REM-Sleep

et al. 2017

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“…Moreover, to be able to disentangle phonology and orthography, the phonological targets were perfect phonological reversed forms, though they were orthographically dissimilar (e.g., “lakes” and “scale,” “talk” and “caught,” “moan” and “gnome”). In contrast to the Klein Villa et al (2006) study, both the prime and the two targets were presented at 1 ms. Though the participants did not see anything during the whole sequence, they were urged to make a choice as to which target they thought was most similar to the prime (after having had fully visible practice sequences): they said “one” for the upper choice and “two” for the lower choice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…All this has fuelled the interest for phonology in the unconscious processing of language in some of the studies of (late) Howard Shevrin and his team. For example, in a study with subliminal priming of reversible words (such as “sleep”/”peels”) a tachistoscopic paradigm was used to test for the unconscious recognition of the reversed readings (Klein Villa et al, 2006). In this experiment, a 1 ms reversible target, such as e.g., the word “dog,” was followed by a semantically related target and a distracter.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonological Ambiguity Detection Outside of Consciousness and Its Defensive Avoidance

Bazan

Kushwaha

Winer

et al. 2019

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Freud proposes that in unconscious processing, logical connections are also (heavily) based upon phonological similarities. Repressed concerns, for example, would also be expressed by way of phonologic ambiguity. In order to investigate a possible unconscious influence of phonological similarity, 31 participants were submitted to a tachistoscopic subliminal priming experiment, with prime and target presented at 1 ms. In the experimental condition, the prime and one of the 2 targets were phonological reversed forms of each other, though graphemically dissimilar (e.g., “nice” and “sign”); in the control condition the targets were pseudo-randomly attributed to primes to which they don't belong. The experimental task was to “blindly” pick the choice most similar to the prime. ERPs were measured with a focus on the N320, which is known to react selectively to phonological mismatch in supraliminal visual word presentations. The N320 amplitude-effects at the electrodes on the midline and at the left of the brain significantly predicted the participants' net behavioral choices more than half a second later, while their subjective experience is one of arbitrariness. Moreover, the social desirability score (SDS) significantly correlates with both the behavioral and the N320 brain responses of the participants. It is proposed that in participants with low SDS the phonological target induces an expected reduction of N320 and this increases their probability to pick this target. In contrast, high defensive participants have a perplexed brain reaction upon the phonological target, with a negatively peaking N320 as compared to control and this leads them to avoid this target more often. Social desirability, which is understood as reflecting defensiveness, might also manifest itself as a defense against the (energy-consuming) ambiguity of language. The specificity of this study is that all of this is happening totally out of awareness and at the level of very elementary linguistic distinctions.

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The relationship between the objective identification threshold and priming effects does not provide a definitive boundary between conscious and unconscious perceptual processes

Fisk

Haase

2011

Consciousness and Cognition

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Testing Freud’s Hypothesis That Word Forms and Word Meaning Are Functionally Distinct: Subliminal Primary-Process Cognition and Its Link to Personality

Cited by 14 publications

References 55 publications

Processing of a Subliminal Rebus during Sleep: Idiosyncratic Primary versus Secondary Process Associations upon Awakening from REM- versus Non-REM-Sleep

Processing of a Subliminal Rebus during Sleep: Idiosyncratic Primary versus Secondary Process Associations upon Awakening from REM- versus Non-REM-Sleep

Phonological Ambiguity Detection Outside of Consciousness and Its Defensive Avoidance

The relationship between the objective identification threshold and priming effects does not provide a definitive boundary between conscious and unconscious perceptual processes

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