Study finds negative spoken words may be screened from awareness
Hebrew University researchers found adults doing a visual task detected neutral spoken words more often than negative ones.
By Priya Raghavan · Science Reporter
3 min read
A new study suggests people may miss negative spoken words more often than neutral ones when their attention is elsewhere. The finding, reported in Psychological Science, challenges the common expectation that threatening or unpleasant language is especially likely to break through into awareness.
Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem tested how emotional meaning affects whether spoken words reach conscious notice. According to the Association for Psychological Science, the work focused on hearing, an area that has been harder to study than vision because spoken words unfold over time rather than appearing in an instant.
Gal R. Chen, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the study’s lead author, said the results show a gap between what people assume they notice and how the unconscious mind may sort information before awareness.
How the test worked
The researchers recruited 101 Hebrew-speaking adults. Participants watched a screen and judged whether a figurine matched the one shown just before it, while an audio stream of made-up words played in the background.
At intervals, the researchers inserted a real Hebrew word into the stream. The word was either emotionally negative or emotionally neutral. Afterward, participants were asked whether they had noticed the real word and completed additional checks meant to measure awareness.
The research team expected negative words to be detected more often, Chen said, because earlier work has shown that unpleasant material can slow people down or increase errors. The experiment produced the reverse result: participants reported neutral words more often than negative ones.
According to the Association for Psychological Science, the researchers repeated the study with additional words and saw the same pattern. They also ran another version using a less demanding visual task, and participants again noticed neutral words more frequently than negative ones.
A possible protective filter
The researchers said one explanation is that consciously processing negative information may carry a mental cost. Under that view, the brain may sometimes keep unpleasant, irrelevant words outside awareness while a person is trying to complete another task.
Chen described the unconscious mind as a possible gatekeeper that may limit access to information that could disrupt attention or influence behavior. He also said future studies could examine whether that filtering process differs in people with anxiety disorders, phobias or post-traumatic stress disorder.
The study does not show how people process full conversations or realistic speech in daily life. Chen noted that the experiments used single words, and the researchers did not test highly positive or taboo terms, which could produce different results.
The paper, “Conscious Detection of Spoken Words Depends on Their Valence,” was published in Psychological Science. The authors include Gal R. Chen and colleagues, with DOI 10.1177/09567976261434113.
This story draws on original reporting from Medical Xpress.