An important question in neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) studies is whether event-related potential (ERP) component P3 reflects visual awareness or the confidence with which one reports a visual experience. In the present study, participants detected visual stimuli presented at threshold-level contrast, then rated their subjective confidence with respect to their response on a four-point scale (very confident, quite confident, slightly confident, and not confident at all). Because awareness responses in trials with rating of “not confident at all” were likely noise, we analyzed the data excluding those trials. The ERP results revealed a significant positive difference in P3 amplitude between “aware” and “unaware” trials. P3 amplitude was more positive in aware trials compared to unaware trials. Importantly, this pattern was observed for trials with combined confidence ratings of “very confident” and “quite confident,” and for trials with confidence ratings of “slightly confident,” suggesting that awareness alone can modulate P3. A significant interaction between awareness and confidence is reported, suggesting that confidence influences P3 as well. In addition, ERP results revealed that visual awareness negativity (VAN) was observed over posterior temporal and occipital electrodes and largely not influenced by confidence. This result indicated that VAN is an early neural correlate of visual awareness.

Electrophysiological recordings are usually used to study neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs). The aim of our present study was to use two detection tasks to dissociate the electrophysiological correlates of visual awareness from the post-perceptual processes. In immediate detection task, participants had to quickly report whether the stimulus was presented after stimulus, whereas in delayed detection task, participants had to put off reporting whether the stimulus was presented after stimulus. The results showed that two previously frequently observed electrophysiological NCCs were observed: visual awareness negativity (VAN) and later positivity (LP). Importantly, the amplitude of VAN over posterior temporal and occipital areas was not influenced by the task manipulation. However, the amplitude of LP over parietal, posterior temporal and occipital areas was influenced by the task manipulation during 650–850 ms. These data suggest that VAN is an early electrophysiological correlates of visual awareness, and LP reflects post-perceptual processes required in reporting perceptual awareness.

There is a growing interest in the wireless technology to complement the traditional model-driven design approaches with data-driven machine learning- (ML-) based solutions. Telling a white lie is a distinct type of prosocial behavior, because in terms of the nature of lies, it is a lie but its motivation is to benefit someone else. It is unclear how children behave when they are caught in a conflict between prosocial motivation and the psychological cost of losing in a competition. Big data analysis can improve work efficiency, make analysis work more organized, and make analysis results more accurate. So the purpose of this study was to investigate the motivation of children to tell white lies by using big data analysis to examine the effects of different competitive situations on white lie behavior among 6- to 11-year olds. A final-round-of-game paradigm was used to elicit prosocial white lies in children under varying competitive conditions. These were explored in two studies. In the study, two groups of children ( N = 177 , M age = 104.41 months, SD = 1.74 , 50.8% boys) participated in either baseline conditions or a competition against others. More children tended to tell the truth in the others-competition context group, and boys tended to be more truthful. These findings show that a decision of whether to tell a white lie is influenced by the psychological cost to children.

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