TY - JOUR
T1 - Do conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms? A meta-contrast study
AU - Peremen, Ziv
AU - Lamy, Dominique
N1 - Funding Information:
Support was provided by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) Grant No. 1475/12 and the Binational Science Foundation (BSF) Grant No. 2009425 to D.L. We thank Anya Kolgov, Einat Ashkenazi, Sapir Adni and Idan Zelikovich for their help in running the experiments.
PY - 2014/2
Y1 - 2014/2
N2 - There is currently no consensus regarding what measures are most valid to demonstrate perceptual processing without awareness. Likewise, whether conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms or lie on a continuum remains a matter of debate. Here, we addressed these issues by comparing the time courses of subjective reports, objective discrimination performance and response priming during meta-contrast masking, under similar attentional demands. We found these to be strikingly similar, suggesting that conscious perception and unconscious processing cannot be dissociated by their time course. Our results also demonstrate that unconscious processing, indexed by response priming, occurs, and that objective discrimination performance indexes the same conscious processes as subjective visibility reports. Finally, our results underscore the role of attention by showing that how much attention the stimulus receives relative to the mask, rather than whether processing is measured by conscious discrimination or by priming, determines the time course of meta-contrast masking.
AB - There is currently no consensus regarding what measures are most valid to demonstrate perceptual processing without awareness. Likewise, whether conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms or lie on a continuum remains a matter of debate. Here, we addressed these issues by comparing the time courses of subjective reports, objective discrimination performance and response priming during meta-contrast masking, under similar attentional demands. We found these to be strikingly similar, suggesting that conscious perception and unconscious processing cannot be dissociated by their time course. Our results also demonstrate that unconscious processing, indexed by response priming, occurs, and that objective discrimination performance indexes the same conscious processes as subjective visibility reports. Finally, our results underscore the role of attention by showing that how much attention the stimulus receives relative to the mask, rather than whether processing is measured by conscious discrimination or by priming, determines the time course of meta-contrast masking.
KW - Attention
KW - Awareness
KW - Conscious perception
KW - Consciousness
KW - Meta-contrast masking
KW - NCC
KW - Response priming
KW - Subliminal processing
KW - Unconscious processing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84891692827&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.concog.2013.12.006
DO - 10.1016/j.concog.2013.12.006
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AN - SCOPUS:84891692827
SN - 1053-8100
VL - 24
SP - 22
EP - 32
JO - Consciousness and Cognition
JF - Consciousness and Cognition
IS - 1
ER -