Repeated presentation of suboptimal stimuli and subsequent "affective" responses

A priming paradigm was employed to examine the veridicality of an independent affective and cognitive processing system (Zajonc 1980). This assertion was tested by comparing participants physiological reactions to neutral and affective priming stimuli. Cardiovascular reactivity was recorded while participants (N=36) watched a computer monitor that presented stimuli of brief duration of exposure (suboptimal). At suboptimal exposures, only affective primes produced significant shifts in the participants physiological activity. One interpretation of these results is that participants' manifested an affective reaction to emotional primes without the benefit of conscious recognition (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc 1980). The results are interpreted in light of neurological (Le Doux 1986) and behavioral evidence (Roediger 1990) to suggest support of interdependence of affect and cognition. This study showed that a physiological-affective priming paradigm has utility for examining the interdependence of affect and cognition.