NEURAL MARKERS OF ETHNIC IMPLICIT ATTITUDES OBTAINED BY TIME-FREQUENCY ANALYSIS OF DATA OF THE SUBLIMINAL EVALUATIVE PRIMING PROCEDURE: PILOT STUDY
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Published:
May 30, 2024
Abstract
Abstract. To study implicit ethnic attitudes, subliminal evaluative priming procedure (SEP) is mostly used, but its neurocognitive correlates are insufficiently studied. The aim of research is to find the neural markers of implicit attitudes obtained by time-frequency (TF) analysis of the SEP procedure data with stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) 200 ms and 300 ms. 9 participants identified themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority group. The SEP – TF plots analysis was conducted. Different frequency patterns were observed for different SOAs. E.g., SOA 300 ms likely associated with the preferred ethnic group in case of self-referential compatible stimulus groups and differed from SOA 200 ms patterns associated with the alternative incompatible stimulus group. The study experimentally substantiates the use of promising SEP methods in combination with the neurophysiological TF and ERP Electroencephalography analysis method.
How to Cite
Veliks, V., Porozovs, J., Plotka, I., Blumenau, N., & Igonins, D. (2024). NEURAL MARKERS OF ETHNIC IMPLICIT ATTITUDES OBTAINED BY TIME-FREQUENCY ANALYSIS OF DATA OF THE SUBLIMINAL EVALUATIVE PRIMING PROCEDURE: PILOT STUDY. Baltic Journal of Legal and Social Sciences, 2(2), 117-133. https://doi.org/10.30525/2592-8813-2024-2-2-15
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Keywords
Electroencephalography (EEG), Time-Frequency analysis (TF), Event-Related Potential (ERP), Subliminal evaluative priming, Implicit ethnic attitude.
References
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30. Plotka, I. (2023). Variables and implicit effect sizes of the evaluative subliminal priming procedure. International Journal of Psychology 58, 115-115.
31. Rudman, L. A. (2004). Sources of implicit attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2), 79–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00279.x
32. Rudman, L. A. (2011). Implicit measures for social and personality psychology. Sage.
33. Schlosberg, H. (1952). The description of facial expressions in terms of two dimensions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44, 229-237.
34. Tallon-Baudry, C., & Bertrand, O. (1999). Oscillatory gamma activity in humans and its role in object representation. Trends Cogn Sci. 3, 151-162. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(99)01299-1
35. Wentura, D., & Degner, J. (2010). A practical guide to sequential priming and related tasks. In B. Gawronski & B. K. Payne (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications (pp. 95–116). The Guilford Press.
36. Willadsen-Jensen, E.C., & Ito, T.A. (2008). A foot in both worlds: Asian Americans’ perceptions of Asian, White, and racially ambiguous faces. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 11(2), 182–200.
37. Williams, J. K., & Themanson, J. R. (2011). Neural correlates of the Implicit Association Test: Evidence for semantic and emotional processing. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6, 468–476. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq065.
38. Zhang, Q., Lawson, A., Guo, C., & Jiang, Y. (2006). Electrophysiological Correlates of Visual Affective Priming. Brain Research Bulletin, 71, 316–323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresbull.2006.09.023
39. Zhang, H., Zhou, Q. Q., Chen, H., Hu, X. Q., Li, W. G., Bai, Y., ... & Li, X. L. (2023). The applied principles of EEG analysis methods in neuroscience and clinical neurology. Military Medical Research, 10(1), 67.
2. Amodio, D.M., & Bartholow, B.D. (2011). Event-related potential methods in social cognition. In: A. Voss, C. Stahl, & C. Klauer (Eds.), Cognitive Methods in Social Psychology (pp. 303-339). Guilford Press.
3. American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017, amended 2019). https://www.apa.org/ethics/code
4. Chen, J., Chen, H., Ma, L.K, & Jiang, Y.Y. (2020) A review of studies on unconscious emotional priming. Open Access Library Journal, 7: e6284. https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1106284.
5. Collins, A.M., & Quillian, M.R. (1969). Retrieval from semantic memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 240–248. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(69)80069-1
6. Collins, A.M., & Loftus, E.F. (1975). A spreading activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, 407–428. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.82.6.407
7. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
8. DeHart, T., Pelham, B.W., & Tennen, H. (2006). What lies beneath: Parenting style and implicit self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 1–17.
9. Delorme, A., & Makeig, S. (2004). EEGLAB: an open source toolbox for analysis of single-trial EEG dynamics. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 134, 9-21.
10. Dickter, C.L., & Bartholow, B.D. (2007). Event-related brain potential evidence of ingroup and outgroup attention biases. Social Cognition and Affective Neuroscience 2, 189–198. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/095620.
11. Edwards, E., Soltani, M., Kim, W., Dalal, S. S., Nagarajan, S. S., Berger, M. S., & Knight, R. T. (2009). Comparison of time–frequency responses and the event-related potential to auditory speech stimuli in human cortex. Journal of neurophysiology, 102(1), 377-386.
12. Fazio, R.H., Sanbonmatsu, D.M., Powell, M.C., & Kardes, F.R. (1986). On the automatic activation of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 229-238.
13. Fazio, R.H. (2007). Attitudes as object-evaluation associations of varying strength. Social Cognition, 25, 603-637. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2007.25.5.603
14. Hanslmayr, S., Spitzer, B., Bauml, K.-H. (2009). Brain oscillations dissociate between semantic and nonsemantic encoding of episodic memories. Cerebr. Cortex 19(7), 1631–1640. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn197.
15. Healy, G.F., Boran, L., & Smeaton, A.F. (2015) Neural patterns of the Implicit Association Test. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 605. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00605.
16. Huang, X., Wong, B.W.L., Ng, H.TY. et al. (2025). Neural mechanism underlying preview effects and masked priming effects in visual word processing. Atten Percept Psychophys 87, 5–24. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-024-02904-8
17. Ibanez, A. Gleichgerrcht, E., Hurtado, E., González, R., Haye, A., & Manes F. (2010). Early Neural Markers of Implicit Attitudes: N170 Modulated by Intergroup and Evaluative Contexts in IAT. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4, 188. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2010.00188.
18. Ito, T.A., & Urland, G.R. (2003). Race and gender on the brain: Electrocortical measures of attention to race and gender of multiply categorizable individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4), 616–626. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.616
19. Ito, T.A., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2007). Attitudes as mental and neural states of readiness: Using physiological measures to study implicit attitudes. In: B. Wittenbrink & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Implicit Measures of Attitudes (pp. 125-158). Guilford Press.
20. Ito, T.A., Willadsen-Jensen, E.C., & Correll, J. (2007). Social neuroscience and social perception: New perspectives on categorization, prejudice, and stereotyping. In E. Harmon-Jones & P. Winkielman (Eds.), Social neuroscience: Integrating biological and psychological explanations of social behaviour
(pp. 401–421). Guilford Press.
21. Ito, T.A., & Kubota, J.T. (2024). The social neuroscience of social cognition. In D.E. Carlston, K. Hugenberg, & K.L. Johnson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Social Cognition, Second Edition, Oxford Library of Psychology (pp. 938–968). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197763414.013.34
22. Kubota, J.T., & Ito, T.A. (2007). Multiple cues in social perception: the time course of processing race and facial expression. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(5), 738–752. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.10.023.
23. Manfredi, M., William E., Comfort, W.E., Marques, L.M, Gabriel G., Rego, G.G., Egito J.H., Romero, R.L. & Boggio P.S. (2023) Understanding racial bias through electroencephalography. BMC Psychology 11(81). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01125-2
24. Mouchetant-Rostaing, Y., Girard, M. H., Bentin, S., & Aguera, P.E. (2000). Neurophysiological correlates of face gender processing in humans. European Journal of Neuroscience, 12, 303–310. DOI: 10.1046/j.1460-9568.2000.00888.x
25. Petty, R. E., Fazio, R. H., & Brinol, P. (2009). Attitudes: Insights from the new implicit measures. Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203809884
26. Perry, C. (2022). Using electrophysiological correlates of early semantic priming to test models of reading aloud. Scientific Reports, 12, 5224. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09279-6
27. Plotka, I., Igonin, D., & Blumenau, N. (2016). Implicit Attitudes and Measurements: Effect of Context. International Business: Innovations, Psychology and Economics, 7(2(12)), 7-150.
28. https://www.academia.edu/68590096/Implicit_Attitudes_and_Measurements_Effect_of_Context?uc-sb-sw=2531262
29. Plotka, I., Igonin, D., & Blumenau, N. (2017). Assesment of influence of the contextual factor on the measurement results of implicit attitudes at various SOAs using implicit preference index. In G.V. Ozhiganova & I.D. Plotka (Eds.), Activization of mental resourses of personality: Theory and practice. Proceedings of the IV International Symposium July 6-th – 7-th, 2017 (Latvia, Riga) (pp.62-73). Riga: SIA „Hansa Print Riga“. (In Russian).
30. Plotka, I. (2023). Variables and implicit effect sizes of the evaluative subliminal priming procedure. International Journal of Psychology 58, 115-115.
31. Rudman, L. A. (2004). Sources of implicit attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2), 79–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00279.x
32. Rudman, L. A. (2011). Implicit measures for social and personality psychology. Sage.
33. Schlosberg, H. (1952). The description of facial expressions in terms of two dimensions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44, 229-237.
34. Tallon-Baudry, C., & Bertrand, O. (1999). Oscillatory gamma activity in humans and its role in object representation. Trends Cogn Sci. 3, 151-162. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(99)01299-1
35. Wentura, D., & Degner, J. (2010). A practical guide to sequential priming and related tasks. In B. Gawronski & B. K. Payne (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications (pp. 95–116). The Guilford Press.
36. Willadsen-Jensen, E.C., & Ito, T.A. (2008). A foot in both worlds: Asian Americans’ perceptions of Asian, White, and racially ambiguous faces. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 11(2), 182–200.
37. Williams, J. K., & Themanson, J. R. (2011). Neural correlates of the Implicit Association Test: Evidence for semantic and emotional processing. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6, 468–476. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq065.
38. Zhang, Q., Lawson, A., Guo, C., & Jiang, Y. (2006). Electrophysiological Correlates of Visual Affective Priming. Brain Research Bulletin, 71, 316–323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresbull.2006.09.023
39. Zhang, H., Zhou, Q. Q., Chen, H., Hu, X. Q., Li, W. G., Bai, Y., ... & Li, X. L. (2023). The applied principles of EEG analysis methods in neuroscience and clinical neurology. Military Medical Research, 10(1), 67.