Concepts of visual consciousness and their measurement

• Authors: Stefan Wiens

Abstracts

EN

Although visual consciousness can be manipulated easily (e.g., by visual masking), it is unresolved whether it can be assessed accurately with behavioral measures such as discrimination ability and self-report. Older theories of visual consciousness postulated a sensory threshold and distinguished between subjective and objective thresholds. In contrast, newer theories distinguish among three aspects: phenomenal, access, and reflexive consciousness. This review shows that discrimination ability and self-report differ in their sensitivity to these aspects. Therefore, both need to be assessed in the study of visual consciousness.

Keywords

EN

consciousness; awareness; phenomenology; objective; subjective; blindsight

• Publisher: Wyższa Szkoła Finansów i Zarządzania w Warszawie
• Journal: Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 349-359

Contributors

author

Stefan Wiens

References

• Naccache, L. (2005). Visual phenomenal consciousness: a neurological guided tour.Progress in Brain Research, 150, 185-195.[PubMed]
• Pastore, R. E., Crawley, E. J., Berens, M. S., & Skelly, M. A. (2003). "Nonparametric" A' and other modern misconceptions about signal detection theory.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 556-569.[PubMed]
• Pöppel, E., Held, R., & Frost, D. (1973). Residual visual function after brain wounds involving central visual pathways in nan.Nature, 243, 295-296.
• Reingold, E. M., & Merikle, P. M. (1988). Using direct and indirect measures to study perception without awareness.Perception & Psychophysics, 44, 563-575.[PubMed]
• Reingold, E. M., & Merikle, P. M. (1990). On the inter-relatedness of theory and measurement in the study of unconscious processes.Mind and Language, 5, 9-28.
• Rosenthal, D. M. (2002). How many kinds of consciousness?Consciousness and Cognition, 11, 653-665.[PubMed]
• Schmidt, T. (2007). Measuring unconscious cognition: Beyond the zero-awareness criterion.Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 3, 275-287.
• Azzopardi, P., & Cowey, A. (1997). Is blindsight like normal, near-threshold vision?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 94, 14190-14194.[PubMed]
• Baars, B. J. (2002). The conscious access hypothesis: origins and recent evidence.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 47-52.[PubMed]
• Baars, B. J. (2005). Global workspace theory of consciousness: toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience.Progress in Brain Research, 150, 45-53.[PubMed]
• Baars, B. J., & Laureys, S. (2005). One, not two, neural correlates of consciousness.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 269-269.[PubMed]
• Block, N. (2001). Paradox and cross purposes in recent work on consciousness.Cognition, 79, 197-219.[PubMed]
• Block, N. (2005a). The merely verbal problem of consciousness - Reply to Baars and Laureys.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 270-270.
• Block, N. (2005b). Two neural correlates of consciousness.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 46-52.[PubMed]
• Bowers, K. S. (1984). On being unconsciously influenced and informed. In K. S. Bowers & D. Meichenbaum (Eds.),The unconscious reconsidered(pp. 227-272). New York: Wiley.
• Breitmeyer, B. G., & Öğmen, H. (2006). Visual masking: Time slices through conscious and unconscious vision (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Breitmeyer, B. G., Ro, T., & Singhal, N. S. (2004). Unconscious color priming occurs at stimulus- not percept-dependent levels of processing.Psychological Science, 15, 198-202.
• Cheesman, J., & Merikle, P. M. (1984). Priming with and without awareness.Perception & Psychophysics, 36, 387-395.[PubMed]
• Cheesman, J., & Merikle, P. M. (1986). Distinguishing conscious from unconscious perceptual processes.Canadian Journal of Psychology, 40, 343-367.[PubMed]
• Cowey, A. (2004). The 30th Sir Frederick Bartlett lecture: Fact, artefact, and myth about blindsight.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology, 57, 577-609.[PubMed]
• Cowey, A., & Stoerig, P. (1995). Blindsight in monkeys.Nature, 373, 247-249.[PubMed]
• Dehaene, S., Changeux, J. P., Naccache, L., Sackur, J., & Sergent, C. (2006). Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 204-211.[PubMed]
• Dehaene, S., & Naccache, L. (2001). Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework.Cognition, 79, 1-37.[PubMed]
• Dehaene, S., Naccache, L., Le Clec'H, G., Koechlin, E., Mueller, M., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., et al. (1998). Imaging unconscious semantic priming.Nature, 395, 597-600.[PubMed]
• Dienes, Z. (2004). Assumptions of subjective measures of unconscious mental states - Higher order thoughts and bias.Journal Of Consciousness Studies, 11, 25-45.
• Duncan, J. (1985). 2 techniques for investigating perception without awareness.Perception & Psychophysics, 38, 296-298.
• Enns, J. T., & Di Lollo, V. (2000). What's new in visual masking?Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 345-352.[PubMed]
• Eriksen, C. W. (1960). Discrimination and learning without awareness: A methodological survey and evaluation.Psychological Review, 67, 279-300.[PubMed]
• Esteves, F., & Öhman, A. (1993). Masking the face: recognition of emotional facial expressions as a function of the parameters of backward masking.Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 34, 1-18.
• Frith, C., Perry, R., & Lumer, E. (1999). The neural correlates of conscious experience: an experimental framework.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 105-114.
• Haase, S. J., Theios, J., & Jenison, R. (1999). A signal detection theory analysis of an unconscious perception effect.Perception & Psychophysics, 61, 986-992.[PubMed]
• Hannula, D. E., Simons, D. J., & Cohen, N. J. (2005). Imaging implicit perception: promise and pitfalls.Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 247-255.[PubMed]
• Hannula, D. E., Simons, D. J., & Cohen, N. J. (2006). Objective measures of awareness: why not aim higher? [Correspondence] [Electronic Version].Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, from www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n3/full/nrn1630-c2.html.www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n3/full/nrn1630-c2.html
• Holender, D. (1986). Semantic activation without conscious identification in dichotic-listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and appraisal.Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 1-23.
• Kim, C. Y., & Blake, R. (2005). Psychophysical magic: rendering the visible 'invisible'.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 381-388.[PubMed]
• Lambie, J. A., & Marcel, A. J. (2002). Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience: A theoretical framework.Psychological Review, 109, 219-259.[PubMed]
• Lamme, V. A. F. (2003). Why visual attention and awareness are different.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 12-18.[PubMed]
• Lamme, V. A. F. (2004). Separate neural definitions of visual consciousness and visual attention; a case for phenomenal awareness.Neural Networks, 17, 861-872.[PubMed]
• Lamme, V. A. F. (2006). Towards a true neural stance on consciousness.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 494-501.
• Lovibond, P. F., & Shanks, D. R. (2002). The role of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning: Empirical evidence and theoretical implications.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 28, 3-26.[PubMed]
• Macmillan, N. A. (1986). The psychophysics of subliminal perception.Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 38-39.
• Macmillan, N. A., & Creelman, C. D. (2005).Detection theory: A user's guide(2nd ed.). Mahway, New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum Associates
• Merikle, P. M., & Cheesman, J. (1987). Current status of research on subliminal perception.Advances in Consumer Research, 14, 298-302.
• Merikle, P. M., & Daneman, M. (2000). Conscious vs. unconscious perception. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.),The new cognitive neurosciences(2nd ed., pp. 1295-1303). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Merikle, P. M., & Reingold, E. M. (1998). On demonstrating unconscious perception: Comment on Draine and Greenwald (1998).Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 304-310.[PubMed]
• Merikle, P. M., Smilek, D., & Eastwood, J. D. (2001). Perception without awareness: perspectives from cognitive psychology.Cognition, 79, 115-134.
• Schmidt, T., & Vorberg, D. (2006). Criteria for unconscious cognition: Three types of dissociation.Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 489-504.[PubMed]
• Schooler, J. W. (2002). Re-representing consciousness: dissociations between experience and meta-consciousness.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 339-344.[PubMed]
• Sergent, C., & Dehaene, S. (2004). Is consciousness a gradual phenomenon? Evidence for an all-or-none bifurcation during the attentional blink.Psychological Science, 15, 720-728.[PubMed]
• Sperling, G. (1960). The information available in brief visual presentations.Psychological Monographs, 74, 1-29.
• Stoerig, P., Zontanou, A., & Cowey, A. (2002). Aware or unaware: Assessment of cortical blindness in four men and a monkey.Cerebral Cortex, 12, 565-574.[PubMed]
• VanRullen, R., & Thorpe, S. J. (2001). Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Ultra-rapid visual categorisation of natural and artifactual objects.Perception, 30, 655-668.[PubMed]
• Weiskrantz, L. (1986).Blindsight. A case study and implications. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Weiskrantz, L. (1997).Consciousness lost and found.New York: Oxford University Press.
• Weiskrantz, L., Warrington, E. K., Sanders, M. D., & Marshall, J. (1974). Visual capacity in hemianopic field following a restricted occipital ablation.Brain, 97, 709-728.[PubMed]
• Wiens, S. (2005). Interoception in emotional experience.Current Opinion in Neurology, 18, 442-447.[PubMed]
• Wiens, S. (2006a). Current concerns in visual masking.Emotion, 6, 675-680.[PubMed]
• Wiens, S. (2006b). Remain aware of awareness [Correspondence] [Electronic Version].Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, from www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n3/full/nrn1630-c1.html.www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n3/full/nrn1630-c1.html
• Wiens, S. (2006c). Subliminal emotion perception in brain imaging: Findings, issues, and recommendations.Progress in Brain Research, 156, 105-121.[PubMed]
• Wiens, S., & Öhman, A. (2002). Unawareness is more than a chance event: comment on Lovibond and Shanks (2002).Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 28, 27-31.
• Wiens, S., & Öhman, A. (2007). Probing unconscious emotional processes: On becoming a successful masketeer. In J. A. Coan & J. J. B. Allen (Eds.),The handbook of emotion elicitation and assessment(pp. 65-90). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Zeki, S. (2003). The disunity of consciousness.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 214-218.[PubMed]

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10053-008-0035-y