The time course of temporal attention effects on non-conscious prime processing
Résumé
We presented a masked prime at various prime-target-intervals (PTI) before a target that required a speeded motor response and investigated the impact of temporal attention on the non-conscious prime processing. The allocation of temporal attention on the target was manipulated by presenting an accessory tone compared to a no-tone condition. The results showed that independently of the visibility of the prime, temporal attention led to an enhanced effect of prime-target congruency on the response times and the amount of the enhancement increased with increasing PTI. This effect pattern is consistent with the assumption of an increasing influence of the temporal attention and of the increasing PTI on non-conscious prime processing; it argues against a hypothesis that temporal attention narrows the time period in which the prime may affect target processing. An accumulator model is proposed assuming that target-related temporal attention increases the accumulation rate for masked primes and, thus, enhances the impact of the prime on the speed of choice decisions.