With a few yet increasing number of exceptions, the cognitive sciences enthusiastically endorsed the idea that there are basic facial expressions of emotions that are created by specific configurations of facial muscles. We review evidence that suggests an inherent role for context in emotion perception. Context does not merely change emotion perception at the edges; it leads to radical categorical changes. The reviewed findings suggest that configurations of facial muscles are inherently ambiguous, and they call for a different approach towards (...) the understanding of facial expressions of emotions. Prices of sticking with the modal view, and advantages of an expanded view, are succinctly reviewed. (shrink)

Working Memory plays a crucial role in many high-level cognitive processes . The prevalent view holds that active components of WM are predominantly intentional and conscious. This conception is oftentimes expressed explicitly, but it is best reflected in the nature of major WM tasks: All of them are blatantly explicit. We developed two new WM paradigms that allow for an examination of the role of conscious awareness in WM. Results from five studies show that WM can operate unintentionally and outside (...) of conscious awareness, thus suggesting that the current view should be expanded to include implicit WM. (shrink)

Perceptual conscious experiences result from non-conscious processes that precede them. We document a new characteristic of the cognitive system: the speed with which visual meaningful stimuli are prioritized to consciousness over competing noise in visual masking paradigms. In ten experiments (N = 399) we find that an individual's non-conscious visual prioritization speed (NVPS) is ubiquitous across a wide variety of stimuli, and generalizes across visual masks, suppression tasks, and time. We also find that variation in NVPS is unique, in that (...) it cannot be explained by variation in general speed, perceptual decision thresholds, short-term visual memory, or three networks of attention (alerting, orienting and executive). Finally, we find that NVPS is correlated with subjective measures of sensitivity, as they are measured by the Highly Sensitive Person scale. We conclude by discussing the implications of variance in NVPS for understanding individual variance in behavior and the neural substrates of consciousness. (shrink)

When is choice affected by subliminal messages? This question has fascinated scientists and lay people alike, but it is only recently that reliable empirical data began to emerge. In the current paper we bridge the literature on implicit motivation and that on subliminal persuasion. We suggest that motivation in general, and implicit motivation more specifically, plays an important role in subliminal persuasion: It sensitizes us to subliminal cues. To examine this hypothesis we developed a new paradigm that allows powerful tests (...) of subliminal influences as well as stringent assessments of subliminality. The results of two experiments suggest that implicit motivation can enhance the effects of subliminal priming on choice. (shrink)

In a recent comment on our paper Implicit Working Memory Guterman argued that a possible interpretation of the results of one of our experiments is that “conscious awareness … enabled the participants to find ways to benefit from the predictability … while nullifying the cost.” Unfortunately, the data do not support this interpretation. Additionally, Guterman seems to have suggested that our results may be explained by non-working memory processes. We argue against this interpretation.