Semantic access occurs outside of awareness for the ground side of a figure

Abstract

Traditional theories of vision assume that figures and grounds are assigned early in processing, with semantics being accessed later and only by figures, not by grounds. We tested this assumption by showing observers novel silhouettes with borders that suggested familiar objects on their ground side. The ground appeared shapeless near the figure's borders; the familiar objects suggested there were not consciously perceived. Participants' task was to categorize words shown immediately after the silhouettes as naming natural versus artificial objects. The words named objects from the same or from a different superordinate category as the familiar objects suggested in the silhouette ground. In Experiment 1, participants categorized words faster when they followed silhouettes suggesting upright familiar objects from the same rather than a different category on their ground sides, whereas no category differences were observed for inverted silhouettes. This is the first study to show unequivocally that, contrary to traditional assumptions, semantics are accessed for objects that might be perceived on the side of a border that will ultimately be perceived as a shapeless ground. Moreover, although the competition for figural status results in suppression of the shape of the losing contender, its semantics are not suppressed. In Experiment 2, we used longer silhouette-to-word stimulus onset asynchronies to test whether semantics would be suppressed later in time, as might occur if semantics were accessed later than shape memories. No evidence of semantic suppression was observed; indeed, semantic activation of the objects suggested on the ground side of a border appeared to be short-lived. Implications for feedforward versus dynamical interactive theories of object perception are discussed.

Seeing and Conceptualizing: Modularity and the Shallow Contents of Perception

“…; Cacciamani et al. ; see figure ). Of particular interest for the current discussion: the test that showed this was a lexical decision task (where the subject has to say whether a string of letters forms a word or a non‐word).…”

“…A sample figure/ground stimuli used in Cacciamani et al. (). Even when the white boots are not consciously perceived as such and are instead seen as ground, they still cause unconscious conceptual activation.…”

“…In part, this is because the categorization of the ground is parsed too quickly for cognitive penetration: the stimuli in Cacciamani et al. () need only be presented for 50 ms (and the categorization appears to be complete after only 150 ms; see figure for a sample stimulus). Peterson herself, no fan of modularity or foe of top‐down effects, even explicitly recognizes as much in her most recent work on the topic.…”

Reconciling cognitive and affective neuroscience perspectives on the brain basis of emotional experience

“…Thus, we disagree that subcortical activation alone will be sufficient for causing a conscious feeling. Just as a meaningful object can be detected by the visual system, and its colors, shape, texture, and conceptual interpretation can be represented, all without that shape being consciously experienced or recognized (Cacciamani et al, 2014;Dehaene, 2014;Dehaene et al, 2006;Sanguinetti et al, 2014), we suggest that emotional reactions can also be initiated, detected, and represented without being selected for conscious access (and hence without generating a reportable/verifiable subjective feeling). While the theoretical models appealed to by CN make it clear exactly when and why an event -whether cognitive or affective -will be consciously experienced (i.e., it must be represented and successfully compete for conscious access), it is not clear from the AN perspective why some cognitive processes can be unconscious but some affective processes can not.…”

Neural evidence for competition-mediated suppression in the perception of a single object

“…The alternative view, however, posits that feedforward as well as feedback processing is necessary for conscious object perception (Bullier, 2001;Lamme & Roelfsema, 2000;Nadel & Peterson, 2013;Peterson & Cacciamani, 2013). Specifically, on an initial feedforward pass, objects that might be perceived on opposite sides of a shared border are assessed up to high levels of the visual system (for evidence consistent with this claim, see Cacciamani, Mojica, Sanguinetti, & Peterson, 2014;Peterson, Cacciamani, Mojica, and Sanguinetti, 2012;. The best interpretation (i.e., the "winner") is selected through a competitive process that entails suppression of the shape in the "losing" region and the…”