More Power to the Unconscious: Conscious, but Not Unconscious, Exogenous Attention Requires Location Variation
Abstract
Substantial evidence suggests that unconscious processing can be characterized as a lesser or weaker version of conscious processing. To test this notion, we designed a novel repeated-cuing procedure based on exogenous attention: The location of the attentional cue was first fixed across blocks (fixed-cue blocks), and then the cue was removed in subsequent blocks (no-cue blocks). The visibility of the cue was also manipulated. We found that when the cue was invisible, the response to a prespecified stimulus in the fixed-cue blocks was faster if the stimulus was at the cued location than if it was at the uncued location. But when the cue was visible, this cuing effect was abolished, potentially because of an awareness-dependent, location-based inhibition mechanism, as revealed by an attentional bias against the previously cued location in the no-cue blocks. We call this bias negative attentional aftereffect. These results provide novel evidence against the weaker-version characterization of unconscious effects, highlighting dissociable components of orienting and inhibition in exogenous cuing through awareness and temporal dynamics.
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When people are unaware of a visual stimulus, visual attention suffers deficits in control: it behaves less stably over time and is less able to error-correct and less able to adapt to perturbations.
“However, in that case, visual attention suffers deficits in control. It behaves less stably over time and shows evidence of being less able to error-correct and less able to adapt to perturbations (McCormick, 1997; Lin and Murray, 2015; Webb and Graziano, 2015; Webb et al., 2016a).”
From The Attention Schema Theory: A Foundation for Engineering Artificial Consciousness (2017) · cites this paper as Lin and Murray, 2015
Experimental results on attention and awareness have been interpreted as consistent with the prediction that control of attention suffers when awareness fails.
“Several experimental results on attention and awareness have been interpreted as consistent with this prediction (McCormick, 1997; Tsushima et al., 2006; Lin and Murray, 2015; Webb and Graziano, 2015; Webb et al., 2016a), though more experiments are needed.”
From The Attention Schema Theory: A Foundation for Engineering Artificial Consciousness (2017) · cites this paper as Lin and Murray, 2015
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- Authors
- Lin, Z., & Murray, S. O.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2015-01-07
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 221-230
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2147590103
- Cited by
- 19
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 2.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- unconscious processes, bottom-up attention, attentional cuing, attentional inhibition, orienting, awareness, attention dynamics
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Attention, Awareness, Consciousness, Cues, Female, Humans, Male, Orientation, Young Adult
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