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Influences of Music Reading on Auditory Chord Discrimination: A novel Test Bed of Nonconscious Processing for Irrelevant Prime Meaning
- Marie-Luise Augsten
- Stephanie J. Eder
- Christian Büsel
- Christian Valuch
- Ulrich Ansorge
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Description: The question whether nonconscious processing could involve higher-level, semantic representations is of broad interest. Here, we demonstrate semantic processing of task-relevant as well as task-irrelevant features of nonconscious primes within a novel, empirical test bed. In two experiments, trained musicians were visually primed with musical note triads varying in mode and position. The task required to discriminate only the mode in the following auditory target chord. In two experimental blocks, the primes were either consciously visible or masked, respectively. The response times for auditory discrimination of the modes (relevant dimension) of heard triads was measured. Crucially, the heard targets also varied with respect to mode and position, creating different grades of congruency with the visual primes. Based on the Theory of Event Coding, we expected and found interactions between relevant and irrelevant semantic characteristics of masked primes, illustrating that even irrelevant prime meaning was processed. Moreover, our results indicated that both task-relevant and -irrelevant prime characteristics are processed in nonconscious conditions only, and that practice in ignoring uninformative conscious primes can be transferred to a subsequent block. In conclusion, our study demonstrates cross-modal, automatic semantic processing using a novel approach to study such effects.