Attention and Emotion in Anosognosia: Evidence of Implicit Awareness and Repression?

Abstract

Accounts of anosognosia for hemiplegia have long suggested some implicit knowledge of deficit, where lack of awareness is driven by the emotionally-aversive consequences of bringing deficit-related thoughts to consciousness. The present study investigates this issue using an attentional-capture paradigm, presenting words associated with hemiplegia-related deficit. As anticipated, non-anosognosics showed reduced latencies (i.e., facilitation) for emotionally threatening words. In striking contrast, anosognosics showed increased latencies (i.e., interference), a finding which supports the claim of implicit awareness. The effect appears to be due to newly-learned associations to disability-related words: where anosognosics show a pattern of performance previously described as repression.