Time Base / Subliminal

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

Subliminal images?

That old chestnut?

That was proven to be a “crock o’ stuff” years ago.

The best way to “try” this (as you said) is with a high-speed-refresh monitor.

But the “lag” on the screen will cause the image to be retained longer than its “true” exposure time (as will as the viewer’s persistence-of-vision.)

Gee, I guess “everything old IS new again”.

Have fun!

[Chris Wyatt]

I think the best you can hope for is superliminal – around 3 frames
halfmixed from white on black in PAL or NTSC. Coke Ads from the early 90s get close.
Of course there’s always the fabled Langford Hack – the pattern that crashes the mind observing it –
but that doesn’t exist quite yet. Audio subliminals of below 10 milliseconds work mighty fine
in my experience however.
Cute subject and very old school for a psyche department – reminds me of altered states….

[Consolation]

It’s for an undergrad’s first independent research project so we don’t mind if they try something a bit flakey. Not my choice but…
However, there has been some good research done recently, you just have to be a lot more subtle with your measures. For example, threat images can reliably show increased cortisol levels in saliva etc… This is for social cognition so we are talking about small but statistically significant changes in social judgment tasks. So no, we can’t get subjects to kill their flatmates, but we can get them to say… rate people as being more likely to be criminals etc.