Date of Award
Fall 1983
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Tagetz, Gle
Second Advisor
Dupuis, A.
Third Advisor
Bardwell, Rebecca
Abstract
The possibility of unconscious behavioral determinants has been greeted traditionally by the scientific community with waves of skepticism and an occasional flurry of overt hostility. Nevertheless, as early as the fourth century s.c., philosophers presumed that man could be influenced by experiences of which he was unaware (Dixon, 1981). The phenomenon of stimuli presented below an individual's threshold of awareness has bean studied with increasing rigor and precision during the twentieth century. The scientific literature is replete with accounts of pictorial, figural and semantic stimuli presented at sensory levels below reported awareness which influenced the subjects' subsequent behavior. The "subliminal effect" has been studied mast recently as a perceptual puzzle whose resolution is physiological in nature. This study shall serve to extend the field of inquiry relative ta subliminal perception, utilizing cerebral hemisphericity as the operational investigative paradigm...