Five experiments are presented which explore the relation of masking to consciousness and visual word processing. In Experiment 1 a single word or blank field was followed by a pattern mask. Subjects had to make one of three decisions: Did anything precede the mask? To which of two probe words was what preceded the mask more similar graphically? To which of two probe words was it more similar semantically? As word-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was reduced, subjects reached chance performance on the detection, graphic, and semantic decisions in that order. In Experiment 2, subjects again had to choose which of two words was more similar either graphically or semantically to a nondetectable masked word, but the forced-choice stimuli now covaried negatively on graphic and semantic similarity. Subjects were now unable to choose selectively on each dimension, suggesting that their ability to choose in Experiment 1 was passively rather than intentionally mediated. In Experiment 3 subjects had to make manual identification responses to color patches which were either accompanied or preceded by words masked to prevent awareness. Color-congruent words facilitated reaction time (RT), color-incongruent words delayed RT. Experiment 4 used a lexical decision task where a trial consisted of the critical letter string following another not requiring a response. When both were words they were either semantically associated or not. The first letter string was either left unmasked, energy masked monoptically, or pattern masked dichoptically to prevent awareness. The effect of association was equal in the unmasked and pattern masked cases, but absent with energy masking. In Experiment 5 repeating a word-plus-mask (where the SOA precluded detection) from 1 to 20 times (a) increased the association effect on a subsequent lexical decision, but had no effect on (b) detectability or(c) the semantic relatedness of forced guesses of the masked word. It is proposed that central pattern masking has little effect on visual processing itself (while peripheral energy masking does), but affects availability of records of the results of those processes to consciousness. Perceptual processing itself is unconscious and automatically proceeds to all levels of analysis and redescription available to the perceiver. The general importance of these findings is to cast doubt on the paradigm assumption that representations yielded by perceptual analysis are identical to and directly reflected by phenomenal percepts. Experiments 1, 3, and 4

Five Kinds of Unawareness of Emotion Experience Type of unawareness Characteristics Examples Subject is world-focused. Not aware of emotion as own state. Everyday cases of world-focused emotion experience. Clinically unimportant unless state is longterm. Clinical extreme in anger disorders. Detachment: reduced emotion Diminished emotion / diminished hedonic Intellectualization. phenomenology. quality of experience. Possibly ventro-medial pre-frontal damage. Restricted modulation of analytic Inability to attend analytically to emotion Infants; possibly alexithymics. mode of attention: undifferentiated experience. Not aware of aspects of such emotion experience. experience as discrete experiential entities. Deficient 2nd-order awareness. Emotion experience inaccessible to awareness Clinically relevant population of 'repressors'. Attention impaired or deviated ('repression'). (and to report). Parachutists studied by Fenz and Epstein (1967). Developmental trauma leading to problem in representation of self. Lack of categorical-emotion experience. Emotion phenomenology not experienced Everyday cases of lack of categorical-emotion experience. Passive: lack of category. as emotion or not as specific emotion Clinical extreme in panic attacks; case of Pearson Brack. Active: misinterpretation Category not applicable to self: some cases of anger disorder. Lack of category in individual and culture: e.g. 'fago' in Ifaluk.

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