Events

Unconscious cognition without post-hoc selection artifacts: From selective analysis to functional dissociations

Title of the event	Unconscious cognition without post-hoc selection artifacts: From selective analysis to functional dissociations
Series	Forschungskolloquium
Organizer	Experimentelle Psychologie
Speaker	Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmidt
Speaker institution	TU Kaiserslautern
Type of event	Kolloquium
Category	Forschung
Registration required	Nein
Details	One of the most popular approaches to unconscious cognition is the technique of “post-hoc selection”: Priming effects and visibility ratings are measured in multitasks on the same trial, and only trials with lowest visibility ratings are selected for analysis of (presumably unconscious) priming effects. In the past, the technique has been criticized for creating statistical artifacts and capitalizing on chance. In our new paper (Schmidt et al., 2026) we argue that post-hoc selection constitutes a sampling fallacy confusing sensitivity and response bias, wrongly ascribing unconscious processing to stimulus conditions that may be far from indiscriminable. In response to a high-profile “best practice” paper by Stockart et al. (2025) that condones the technique, we use standard signal detection theory to show that post-hoc selection only isolates trials with neutral response bias, irrespective of actual sensitivity, and thus fails to isolate trials where the critical stimulus is “unconscious”. Our own data demonstrate that zero-visibility ratings are consistent with uncomfortably high levels of sensitivity. At the same time, we suggest several ways to demonstrate unconscious cognition that neither require genuinely unconscious primes not have to resort to post-hoc selection.
Date	Start: 02.07.2026, 14:15 Uhr Ende: 02.07.2026 , 15:15 Uhr
Location	Verfügungsgebäude (Platz der Göttinger Sieben 7) Raum 3.106
Contact	39 23613 udorra@uni-goettingen.de
External link	https://www.psych.uni-goettingen.de/de/experime...
File attachment	file