Pop-Out Without Awareness

Hsieh, Po‐Jang; Colas, Jaron T.; Kanwisher, Nancy

doi:10.1177/0956797611419302

Cited by 85 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(65 reference statements)

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“…It has been shown that a simple and salient stimulus could attract one’s attention unconsciously: a feature singleton (i.e. Gabor patch) is able to attract attention when presented alone24 or in a set of homogeneous distractors, namely an unconscious pop-out effect2526. Our Experiment 3, on the other hand, demonstrated feature-integration-driven attention could come into play even when the stimulus was well suppressed and wiped out from conscious awareness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Unconscious processing of facial attractiveness: invisible attractive faces orient visual attention

Hung

Nieh

Hsieh

2016

Sci Rep

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Past research has proven human’s extraordinary ability to extract information from a face in the blink of an eye, including its emotion, gaze direction, and attractiveness. However, it remains elusive whether facial attractiveness can be processed and influences our behaviors in the complete absence of conscious awareness. Here we demonstrate unconscious processing of facial attractiveness with three distinct approaches. In Experiment 1, the time taken for faces to break interocular suppression was measured. The results showed that attractive faces enjoyed the privilege of breaking suppression and reaching consciousness earlier. In Experiment 2, we further showed that attractive faces had lower visibility thresholds, again suggesting that facial attractiveness could be processed more easily to reach consciousness. Crucially, in Experiment 3, a significant decrease of accuracy on an orientation discrimination task subsequent to an invisible attractive face showed that attractive faces, albeit suppressed and invisible, still exerted an effect by orienting attention. Taken together, for the first time, we show that facial attractiveness can be processed in the complete absence of consciousness, and an unconscious attractive face is still capable of directing our attention.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Unconscious processing of facial attractiveness: invisible attractive faces orient visual attention

Hung

Nieh

Hsieh

2016

Sci Rep

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“…We used this approach (in all but one experiment) to determine whether color singleton cues as well as single cues enhance contrast sensitivity. In contrast, previous studies on capture by singletons often present the target in a field of distractors (exceptions: Hsieh, Colas & Kanwisher, 2011; Kim & Cave, 1999; Theeuwes et al, 2004), and with much spatial uncertainty regarding the target’s location.…”

mentioning

confidence: 76%

“…Several studies report that just after the appearance of a color or orientation singleton, responses are speeded to subsequent targets near the singleton and slowed to more distant targets (Burnham & Neely, 2008; Donk & Soesman, 2010; Folk et al, 1992; Kim & Cave, 1999; Mounts, 2000b). Discrimination accuracy is also higher at the singleton’s location than others (Joseph & Optican, 1996; Hsieh, Colas & Kanwisher, 2011; Mounts, 2000a; Theeuwes & Chen, 2005), and higher when there is no distracting singleton present compared with when there is one far from the target (Caputo & Guerra, 1998; Folk, Leber & Egeth, 2002; Theeuwes, Kramer & Kingstone, 2004). …”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

The attentional effects of single cues and color singletons on visual sensitivity.

White¹,

Lunau²,

Carrasco³

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Sudden changes in the visual periphery can automatically draw attention to their locations. For example, the brief flash of a single object (a “cue”) rapidly enhances contrast sensitivity for subsequent stimuli in its vicinity. Feature singletons (e.g., a red circle among green circles) can also capture attention in a variety of tasks. Here, we evaluate whether a peripheral cue that enhances contrast sensitivity when it appears alone has a similar effect when it appears as a color singleton, with the same stimuli and task. In four experiments we asked observers to report the orientation of a target Gabor stimulus, which was preceded by an uninformative cue array consisting either of a single disk or of 16 disks containing a color or luminance singleton. Accuracy was higher and contrast thresholds lower when the single cue appeared at or near the target’s location, compared with farther away. The color singleton also modulated performance but to a lesser degree and only when it appeared exactly at the target’s location. Thus, this is the first study to demonstrate that cueing by color singletons, like single cues, can enhance sensory signals at an early stage of processing.

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“…Attentional capture has recently been demonstrated to operate not as an all-ornone process but rather more gradually, with capture strength increasing with cue contrast (Fuller et al, 2009;Zehetleitner et al, 2013). Another body of work suggests that attentional capture can be modulated through top-down factors such as task set (Ansorge et al, 2011;Folk et al, 1992;Hsieh et al, 2011). The present results demonstrate an additional determinant of capture strength Table 1 Results of stepwise modeling of cue visibility reports as a function of cue type (control vs. phosphenes, phosphenes vs. real cues) and cue validity (valid vs. invalid), together with degrees of freedom per model and goodness-of-fit parameters (AIC, BIC, and G 2 ) of the models.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%