Phonological Ambiguity Detection Outside of Consciousness and Its Defensive Avoidance

Abstract

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.

Keywords: N320; ambiguity; avoidance; consciousness; defense; phonology; subliminal; unconscious.

Figure 1

Low defensive participants make phonological choices, high defensive people avoid them. Net number of phonological choices (experimental–control) in function of the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability scores (r = −0.51; p = 0.004; N = 31). The less “defensive,” the more net phonological choices made by the participant in a fully subliminal priming experiment with tachistoscopic presentation of both prime and target at 1 ms; the participant's task was to pick the target choice which was most similar to the target, choosing between a phonological reversed target (e.g., “DOOR” and “ROAD”) and a non-related target (e.g., “LUNG”).

Figure 2

ERP traces for a participant with a high number vs. a low number of phonological choices. Experimental (solid line) vs. control (dotted line) N320 amplitudes at the mid-left of the brain (average of F_P1, F₃, F_Z, C_Z, T₃, T₅, P_Z, and P₃ electrodes) (A) for a participant with a high net number (4) of phonological choices and (B) for a participant with a low net number (−7) of phonological choices (right). The N320 waves are indicated.

Figure 3

Net number of phonological choices by N320 amplitude effect (experimental—control) at the mid-left of the brain (average of F_P1, F₃, F_Z, C_Z, T₃, T₅, P_Z, and P₃); r = 0.43; p = 0.017); N = 31. The more positive the N320 amplitude effect (i.e., the more negative the N320 amplitude in control trials as compared to experimental trials), the more net phonological choices.

Figure 4

Average ERP traces (experimental minus control) at Cz for subjects with a positive behavioral effect (μ = 2.5; N = 10; solid line) vs. for subjects with a negative behavioral effect (μ = −3.1; N = 19; dotted line). The higher the difference between experimental and control at N320, the more phonological choices ca. 1 s after the N320.