Integrating unseen events over time

Events often share elements that guide us to integrate knowledge from these events. Integration allows us to make inferences that affect reactions to new events. Integrating events and making inferences are thought to depend on consciousness. We show that even unconsciously experienced events, that share elements, are integrated and influence reactions to new events. An unconscious event consisted of the subliminal presentation of two unrelated words. Half of subliminal word pairs shared one word (‘winter red’, ‘red computer’). Overlapping word pairs were presented between 6 s and 78 s apart. The test for integration required participants to judge the semantic distance between suprathreshold words (‘winter computer’). Evidence of integration was provided by faster reactions to suprathreshold words that were indirectly related versus unrelated. This effect was independent of the time interval between overlapping word pairs. We conclude that consciousness is no requirement for the integration of discontiguous events.