Priming in temperature perception

Vidović, Anja. (2014). Priming in temperature perception. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Psychology. [mentor Ivanec, Dragutin].

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Abstract

Perception is a cognitive process by which information from one or more senses are integrated and stimuli are intepretated. Perception can be influenced by preconscious information, which is related to priming, the effect of facilitated response to certain stimuli after being exposed to same or similar stimuli. The effects of priming on perception is experimentally proven in some of perception modalites. Since conscious thermic infomation are being connected to environmetal objects and information from other senses, it can be assumed that they are also being connected to declarative knowledge. The aim of this study was to investigate if priming by using terms that are related to cold or heat can affect perception of temperature of an object. Experiment was carried out on 88 subjects which were divided in two experimental groups and one control group. One experimental group was primed by using cold related words, other experimental group was primed by using heat related words and control group was not primed. After priming process, subjects estimated temperature of two objects, of which one was cooler and the other was warmer than physiological zero. It was hypothesized that the group primed using cold related terms would estimate objects cooler than they really were, the group primed using heat related terms would estimate objects warmer and the control group would estimate temperature correctly. The results did not confrim the hypothesis, but this experiment gave some information and directions which can be used in possible future studies.

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