文章基本信息

标题：Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
本地全文：下载
作者：Noya Meital-Kfir ; Dov Sagi
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2018
卷号：8
期号：1
页码：6442
DOI：10.1038/s41598-018-24554-1
语种：English
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：Recently, using Motion Induced-Blindness (MIB), we have shown that two visual stimuli, one consciously experienced and one not, interact as a function of feature and object similarity, pointing to preserved visual representations of objects, and their constitutive features, in the absence of perceptual awareness. Here we investigated whether these representations preserve the memory of the previously perceived stimulus by testing interactions with the unperceived stimulus modified while it is invisible. Observers performed the MIB task, wherein an object 'Target' (a plaid object) was morphed into one of its features (an oriented Gabor patch) once its disappearance was reported. Reappearances of the morphed target were induced by a visible 'Cue' (object or feature), with reappearance frequency used to quantify the interaction between the visible cue and the invisible target. Reappearance rates were highest when the morphed target and the cue shared the same orientations, with the plaid-cue showing reappearance rates equal to that of the orthogonal-cue. Our findings indicate that target-cue interactions do not depend on memory-stored representations, but rather, on the current state of the consciously unavailable target. We suggest that visual objects can be constructed and deconstructed in the absence of conscious perception, but only objects are consciously available.