An Attempt to Extend Spence's Hypothesis of the Restricting Effects of Awareness

Abstract

It has been hypothesized that a preconscious (unverbalized) word has greater influence on recall than a conscious (verbalized) word. This was tested using a chained word association procedure in which S produced a chain of associates to a stimulus word. The “awareness hypothesis” was tested in those response chains in which one of the two highest value associates of the stimulus word was given as the first response in the chain. The other associate was assumed to be primed by the stimulus word and in the preconscious state. It was found, contrary to the “awareness hypothesis,” that the verbalized associates had greater influence than unverbalized ones on later responses in the chain. This result was taken to limit the scope of the “awareness hypothesis.” It was noted that previous work had used a stronger criterion for a word's being in the preconscious than was used here.