Micher Nitzan, Mazenko Diana, Lamy Dominique
School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
J Cogn. 2024 Oct 1;7(1):71. doi: 10.5334/joc.402. eCollection 2024.
Assessing unconscious processing requires a valid measure of conscious perception. However, the two measures most commonly used, subjective reports and forced-choice discrimination, do not always converge: observers can discriminate stimuli rated as invisible better than chance. A debated issue is whether this phenomenon indicates that subjective reports of unawareness are contaminated by conscious perception, or that forced-choice discrimination performance is contaminated by unconscious processing. To address this question, we took advantage of a previously reported dissociation using masked response priming: for primes rated as invisible on a multi-point scale, response priming occurs only for fast trials, whereas for consciously perceived primes, response priming occurs across response times. Here, we replicated this dissociation, confirming that invisibility-reports were not contaminated by conscious perception. Crucially, we measured prime-discrimination performance within the same experiment and found above-chance performance for unseen primes. Together, these findings suggest that forced-choice discrimination performance is contaminated by unconscious processing.
评估无意识加工需要一种有效的意识知觉测量方法。然而,最常用的两种测量方法,即主观报告和迫选辨别,并不总是一致的:观察者能够比随机水平更好地辨别被评定为不可见的刺激。一个有争议的问题是,这种现象是表明无意识的主观报告受到了意识知觉的影响,还是迫选辨别表现受到了无意识加工的影响。为了解决这个问题,我们利用了之前报道的一种使用掩蔽反应启动的分离现象:对于在多点量表上被评定为不可见的启动刺激,反应启动仅在快速试验中出现,而对于有意识知觉到的启动刺激,反应启动在整个反应时间范围内都会出现。在这里,我们重复了这种分离现象,证实了不可见报告没有受到意识知觉的影响。至关重要的是,我们在同一个实验中测量了启动刺激辨别表现,发现对于未被看见的启动刺激有高于随机水平的表现。总之,这些发现表明迫选辨别表现受到了无意识加工的影响。