Development and Testing of Experimental Psychological Techniques for the Study of Unconscious Visual-Perceptual Processes

Abstract

The work is devoted to the actual problem of research of visual-perceptual processes that take place on an unconscious level.  There is a shortage of reliable and informative psychodiagnostic tools, specially designed to study unconscious perceptual and mnestic phenomena in mentally healthy people and in the persons with affective disorders.  It is emphasized that when creating such techniques, it is necessary to take into account the influence of emotional disorders on the course of basic mental processes.  Three new experimental psychological techniques have been developed, aimed at research and objectification of transient conscious and unconscious perceptual-informational processes.  The technique of forming a subsensory stimulus is a step-by-step determination of the exact threshold time of exposure, in which one verbal stimulus out of three demonstrated ones remains unidentified at the conscious level, i.e. subsensory. The technique of psychophysiological confirmation of the significance of a subsensory stimulus is an automated registration-analytical procedure, which involves the use of a serial digital polygraph "Rheocom-stress" and allows you to identify the words most significant to the subject, regardless of the level of subjective awareness of that significance. The technique of detecting unconscious perceptual-mnestic fixation of subsensory stimuli is a method of studying the effect of involuntary memorization, retention and reproduction of subsensory stimuli. Approbation of the developed experimental psychological techniques was performed on the sample of 38 people, including 23 patients with affective disorders and 15 mentally healthy people.  It is shown that the thresholds of visual perception in patients with affective disorders are almost three times higher than in the control group.  The effect of perceptual-mnestic fixation was confirmed by one or more methods in 100% of the cases.  The results of the approbation conclusively testify to the high sensitivity and informativeness of the approach used.