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Five experiments are described using dichotic presentation of word pairs auditorily differing only in initial consonants. Three different types of pairs were used:
neutral-neutral (gill-dill), neutral-positive (ton-fun), neutral-negative (pie-die). The experiments were controlled for report bias, acoustic properties of the stimuli, and order effect, and several findings emerged: 1) Subjects could reliably identify only one word from each competing pair. (Many subjects could not believe two words were actually presented simultaneously.) 2) The affectively more positive word was by far the one more often perceived and reported. 3) The unreported words, although not recognized on a forced-choice, two-alternative task, were recognized on a more sensitive ranking test. 4) Whereas negative affective valence decreased later recognition of reported words in a ranking task, it increased recognition of unreported words in a ranking task. 5) Finally, whereas intertrial cognitive tasks weakened later recognition memory for reported words, they had no such effect on unreported words, and, in fact, increased subsequent unreported word recognition in subjects judged “repressors” on an independent personality measure.
The capacity to identify and measure mental processes beyond conscious awareness was shown once again with these findings. Moreover, insofar as “both the intertrial interference tasks and negative affective valence influenced recognition ranking differently for reported and unreported words,” these findings demonstrated qualitative differences in the processing of words reported from the processing of words the subjects were not able to report. The authors suggest that this processing difference may indeed point to possible qualitative differences between conscious and unconscious mental functioning.