Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Knotts, Jeffrey D.; Lau, Hakwan; Peters, Megan A. K.

doi:10.1101/264598

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…These results are in line with the absence of evidence for blindsight-like behavior reported in the original Peters and Lau (2015) study (which used forward-backward masking and simple visual stimuli), as well as the observation that various masking techniques fail to produce differences in the relationship between objective versus subjective thresholds, contrary to dominant theory (Knotts et al, 2018) . Our observations also support the finding that even noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulation fails to produce the ability to discriminate a stimulus in the absence of any visual awareness or confidence (Peters, Fesi, et al, 2017) .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Further, past attempts to remedy response bias concerns (Kolb & Braun, 1995;Kunimoto, Miller, & Pashler, 2001) have met with their own conceptual or replicability challenges (Evans & Azzopardi, 2007;Galvin, Podd, Drga, & Whitmore, 2003;Morgan, Mason, & Solomon, 1997;Robichaud & Stelmach, 2003) . Recently, we used visual masking in a bias-free paradigm to demonstrate that it may not be possible to induce blindsight in normal observers when response bias confounds are controlled for (Peters & Lau, 2015) ; follow-up studies also demonstrated that several other masking techniques commonly assumed to dissociate objective and subjective processing may similarly fail to produce conditions under which blindsight could be induced (Knotts, Lau, & Peters, 2018) .…”

Section: Normal Observers Show No Evidence For Blindsight In Facial Ementioning

confidence: 99%

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Normal observers show no evidence for blindsight in facial emotion perception

Rajananda

Zhu

Peters

2018

Preprint

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It is commonly assumed that normal human observers can exhibit 'blindsight-like' behavior: the ability to discriminate or identify a stimulus without being aware of it. However, we recently used a bias-free task to show that what looks like blindsight may in fact be an artifact of typical experimental paradigms' susceptibility to response bias. While those findings challenge many previous reports of blindsight in normal observers, they do not rule out the possibility that different stimuli or techniques could reveal such perception without awareness. One particularly intriguing candidate for this unconscious perception is emotion processing, as processing of emotional stimuli (e.g. fearful/happy faces) has been reported to potentially bypass conscious visual circuits. Here we used the bias-free blindsight paradigm to investigate whether emotion processing might reveal 'featural blindsight', i.e. the ability to identify a face's emotion without having introspective access to the task-relevant features of the face that led to the discrimination decision. However, despite the purported ability of emotional stimuli to bypass conscious visual processing, we saw no evidence for such emotion processing 'featural blindsight': like in our previous study, as soon as participants could identify a face's emotion they reported introspective access to the task-relevant features, matching predictions of a Bayesian ideal observer. The present results challenge dominant theory, adding to the growing body of evidence that perceptual discrimination ability in the complete absence of introspective access may not be possible for neurologically intact observers.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Normal Observers Show No Evidence For Blindsight In Facial Ementioning

confidence: 99%

Normal observers show no evidence for blindsight in facial emotion perception

Rajananda

Zhu

Peters

2018

Preprint

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“…To support their claim, the skeptics rely on experimental paradigms controlling for the effects of report biases (more on this in Section 1) (Barthelme and Mamassian, 2009;de Gardelle and Mamassian, 2014;Peters & Lau, 2015). The bad news for unconscious perception enthusiasts is that once biases are controlled for, as done in a series of studies by Peters and colleagues, subjects do not exhibit behaviors consistent with unconscious perception (Knotts et al 2018;Peters et al 2017;Peters & Lau, 2015). Following Berger & Mylopoulos (2019, p.1), this series of studies can be considered as "the most powerful evidence" in support of the conclusion that purported cases of unconscious perception are actually cases of weak conscious perception.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How (not) to underestimate unconscious perception

Michel

2022

Mind & Language

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Studying consciousness requires contrasting conscious and unconscious perception.While many studies have reported unconscious perceptual effects, recent work has questioned whether such effects are genuinely unconscious, or whether they are due to weak conscious perception. Some philosophers and psychologists have reacted by denying that there is such a thing as unconscious perception, or by holding that unconscious perception has been previously overestimated. This article has two parts. In the first part, I argue that the most significant attack on unconscious perception commits the criterion content fallacy: the fallacy of interpreting evidence that observers were conscious of something as evidence that they were conscious of the task-relevant features of the stimuli. In the second part, I contend that the criterion content fallacy is prevalent in consciousness research. For this reason, I hold that if unconscious perception exists, scientists studying consciousness could routinely underestimate it. I conclude with methodological recommendations for moving the debate forward.Unconscious perception is like Sisyphus' rock. Each time researchers believe they have proved it, the rock rolls down, and they have to start over again (Irvine, 2012a;Michel, 2020). Tired of having to imagine Sisyphus happy, researchers have developed new tasks with the potential to demonstrate the existence of unconscious perception once and for all (Peters & Lau, 2015). And as these experiments have failed to find a single trace of unconscious perception, the top of the hill looks unattainable. Consciousness researchers are not like Sisyphus, the skeptics argue. They are like Tantalus: desperately reaching for something they cannot have. This article is a response to the skeptics. Unconscious perception is within our grasp.Determining whether unconscious perception exists is crucial for current discussions on consciousness and perception. Theories of consciousness typically aim to identify the mechanisms distinguishing conscious from unconscious perception (e.g., Brown et al. 2019;Mashour et al. 2020;Lamme, 2015). If unconscious perception does not exist, such theories are probably wrong. The issue is also relevant for philosophical theories of perception: unconscious perception is commonly thought to support 'representationalist' views of perception over 'naïve realist' views (Berger & Nanay, 2016).The current orthodoxy is that unconscious perception exists. The evidence for this comes from a wide variety of experimental paradigms in which healthy participants -and neurological patients -can identify properties of stimuli that they fail to report perceiving

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“…"this stimulus is more visible than this other one", as in e.g. Knotts, Lau, & Peters (2018)); reports of awareness using the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) (0=no awareness, 1=brief glimpse, 2=almost clear awareness, 3=clear awareness; (Ramsøy & Overgaard, 2004)); confidence ratings (e.g. 1=not confident, 2=barely confident, 3=somewhat confident, 4=very confident, as in e.g.…”

Section: Subjective Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Neural Substrates of Conscious Perception without Performance Confounds

Morales¹,

Odegaard²,

Maniscalco³

2019

Preprint

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How does the brain give rise to consciousness? A common approach to addressing this question in neuroscience research involves analyzing differences in neural activity in experimental conditions where consciousness of a stimulus differs. However, unless careful measures are taken, conditions that differ in awareness typically also differ in perceptual task performance, e.g. stimulus detection and discrimination. A large body of research demonstrates that task performance and awareness can dissociate, indicating that they are separate mental processes with separate underlying mechanisms. Thus, task performance looms as a potential confound in consciousness science: computational and neural processes attributed to differences in consciousness may actually be better attributed to correlated but distinct differences in task performance. Here we present an extended exploration of the issue of task performance confounds in consciousness research. We describe the approach of performance matching (i.e. creating experimental conditions that yield identical task performance yet different levels of awareness) as a solution to the problem of performance confounds, and discuss why it is not appropriate to artificially match performance by post-hoc selection of trials (e.g. analyzing correct trials only). We review a growing literature demonstrating matched-performance / different-awareness effects using a variety of experimental designs and discuss signal detection theory models that can both explain extant results and guide the design of future research. Finally, we consider caveats and nuances for performance matching approaches and propose that future research could pool across multiple experimental designs with disjoint sets of confounds to triangulate on the confound-free neural substrates of consciousness.

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Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Cited by 7 publications

References 46 publications

Normal observers show no evidence for blindsight in facial emotion perception

Normal observers show no evidence for blindsight in facial emotion perception

How (not) to underestimate unconscious perception

The Neural Substrates of Conscious Perception without Performance Confounds

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