ABSTRACT

The present study is an invitation adressed to everybody in order to reconsider and interpret the perceptual defense/vigilance phenomenon from different point of view. The first evidence of this effect was put forward by so-called New Look approach in which tahisto-scopically presented words with unpleasant connotation and taboo words had higher thresholds than neutral words. Here we insist especially on the major criticisms that have been leveled against it and on the reformulation of the phenomenon in information-processing terms. At the end there are several personal preliminaries data obtained using a new experimental paradigme.

KEYWORDS: perceptual defense, anxiety