Hassin recently proposed the “Yes It Can” (YIC) principle to describe the division of labor between conscious and unconscious processes in human cognition. According to this principle, unconscious processes can carry out every fundamental high-level cognitive function that conscious processes can perform. In our commentary, we argue that the author presents an overly idealized review of the literature in support of the YIC principle. Furthermore, we point out that the dissimilar trends observed in social and cognitive psychology, with respect to (...) published evidence of strong unconscious effects, can better be explained by the way how awareness is defined and measured in both research fields. Finally, we show that the experimental paradigm chosen by Hassin to rule out remaining objections against the YIC principle is unsuited to verify the new default notion that all high-level cognitive functions can unfold unconsciously. (shrink)

The dynamic constraint relaxation theory predicts crucial roles of the initial diversity and evaluation in creative problem-solving. We reported the experimental evidence supporting these predictions, using an insight problem. The experiments showed that the degrees of making different types of trials and the appropriate evaluation were closely related to individual differences in insight problem-solving, and that evaluation became more appropriate by making the problem-solving goal explicit. The review of the research in related fields showed that these experimental findings were in (...) congruent with the evidence obtained from different types of creative activities. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness provides the most comprehensive overview of current philosophical research on consciousness. Featuring contributions from some of the most prominent experts in the field, it explores the wide range of types of consciousness there may be, the many psychological phenomena with which consciousness interacts, and the various views concerning the ultimate relationship between consciousness and physical reality. It is an essential and authoritative resource for anyone working in philosophy of mind or interested in (...) states of consciousness. (shrink)

Little is known about the time of development of the binocular suppression. In the present study, we evaluated the emergence of binocular suppression in infants by using continuous flash suppression (CFS, Tsuchiya & Koch, 2006). In our experiment, one eye of infants presented with a static face image at one side of the screen, while another eye is presented with dynamic Mondrian patterns in full screen. Adult observers confirmed that the static face image was consciously repressed by the changing Mondrian (...) patterns. If binocular suppression were functional, the infant would not perceive the face as did the adults, and thus would not show any preference in the experiment. However, if binocular suppression in the infants were not yet acquired, they would perceive the face and the Mondrian patterns at the same time, and would thus show preference for the side where the face was presented. The results showed that infants aged 2–3 months, but not those aged 4–5 months, detected the position of the face. Furthermore, this detection was not due to weak contrast sensitivity to the dynamic Mondrian mask. These results indicated that the immature binocular visual system may perceive different images from different eyes simultaneously, and that infants may lose this ability after establishing binocular suppression at 4–5 months of age. (shrink)

The interocular suppression technique termed continuous flash suppression (CFS) has become an immensely popular tool for investigating visual processing outside of awareness. The emerging picture from studies using CFS is that extensive processing of a visual stimulus, including its semantic and affective content, occurs despite suppression from awareness of that stimulus by CFS. However, the current implementation of CFS in many studies examining processing outside of awareness has several drawbacks that may be improved upon for future studies using CFS. In (...) this paper, we address some of those shortcomings, particularly ones that affect the assessment of unawareness during CFS, and ones to do with the use of ‘visible’ conditions that are often included as a comparison to a CFS condition. We also discuss potential biases in stimulus processing as a result of spatial attention and feature-selective suppression. We suggest practical guidelines that minimize the effects of those limitations in using CFS to study visual processing outside of awareness. (shrink)

Previous research has shown implicit semantic processing of faces or pictures, but whether symbolic carriers such as words can be processed this way remains controversial. Here we examine this issue by adopting the continuous flash suppression paradigm to ensure that the processing undergone is indeed unconscious without the involvement of partial awareness. Negative or neutral words projected into one eye were made invisible due to strong suppression induced by dynamic-noise patterns shown in the other eye through binocular rivalry. Inverted and (...) scrambled words were used as controls to provide baselines at orthographic and feature levels, respectively. Compared to neutral words, emotion-described and emotion-induced negative words required longer time to release from suppression, but only for upright words. These results suggest that words can be processed unconsciously up to semantic level since under interocular suppression completely invisible words can lead to different processing speed due to the emotion information they carry. (shrink)

Emotion modulates our time perception. So far, the relationship between emotion and time perception has been examined with visible emotional stimuli. The present study investigated whether invisible emotional stimuli affected time perception. Using continuous flash suppression, which is a kind of dynamic interocular masking, supra-threshold emotional pictures were masked or unmasked depending on whether the retinal position of continuous flashes on one eye was consistent with that of the pictures on the other eye. Observers were asked to reproduce the perceived (...) duration of a frame stimulus that was concurrently presented with a masked or unmasked emotional picture. As a result, negative emotional stimuli elongated the perceived duration of the frame stimulus in comparison with positive and neutral emotional stimuli, regardless of the visibility of emotional pictures. These results suggest that negative emotion unconsciously accelerates an internal clock, altering time perception. (shrink)

Recently, a new movement has arisen in the philosophy of perception: one that views perception as a natural kind. Strangely, this movement has neglected the extensive work in philosophy of science on natural kinds. The present paper remedies this. I start by isolating a widespread and influential assumption, which is that we can give necessary and sufficient conditions for perception. I show that this assumption is radically at odds with current philosophy of science work on natural kinds. I then develop (...) an alternative, new view of perception. This new view takes as its starting point the dominant position on kinds in the life sciences: the homeostatic property cluster account. I show that, if you accept this view, then all of the putative cases of unconscious perception are more plausibly seen as cases where it is indeterminate whether the mental episode in question is an instance of perception. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was two-fold. First we examined whether visible motion appearance was altered by the spatial interaction between invisible and visible motion. We addressed this issue by means of simultaneous motion contrast, in which a horizontal test grating with a counterphase luminance modulation was seen to have the opposite motion direction to a peripheral inducer grating with unidirectional upward or downward motion. Using a mirror stereoscope, observers viewed the inducer and test gratings with one eye, and (...) continuous flashes of colorful squares forming an annulus shape with the other eye. The continuous flashes rendered the inducer subjectively invisible. The observers’ task was to report whether the test grating moved upward or downward. Consequently, simultaneous motion contrast was observed even when the inducer was invisible . Second, we examined whether the observers could correctly respond to the direction of invisible motion: It was impossible. (shrink)

Consciousness researchers are interested in distinguishing between mental activity that occurs with and without awareness . The inattentional blindness paradigm is an excellent tool for this question because it permits the independent manipulation of processing time and awareness. In the present study, we show that implicit texture segregation can occur during inattentional blindness, provided that the texture is exposed for a sufficient duration. In contrast, a Simon effect does not occur during inattentional blindness, even with similar exposure duration of the (...) critical stimulus. This reveals a dissociation between processing time and awareness, consistent with the possibility of separate processing streams for explicit and implicit visual perception. (shrink)

In the contemporary discussions concerning unconscious perception it is not uncommon to postulate that content and phenomenal character are ‘orthogonal’, i.e., there is no type of content which is essentially conscious, but instead, every representational content can be either conscious or not. Furthermore, this is not merely treated as a thesis justified by theoretical investigations, but as supported by empirical considerations concerning the actual functioning of the human cognition. In this paper, I address unconscious color perception and argue for a (...) negative thesis—that the main experimental paradigms used in studying unconscious color perception do not provide support for the position that conscious and unconscious color representations have the same type of content. More specifically, I claim that there is no significant support for the claim that unconscious vision categorically represents surface colors. (shrink)

Perceptual conscious experiences result from non-conscious processes that precede them. We document a new characteristic of the cognitive system: the speed with which visual meaningful stimuli are prioritized to consciousness over competing noise in visual masking paradigms. In ten experiments (N = 399) we find that an individual's non-conscious visual prioritization speed (NVPS) is ubiquitous across a wide variety of stimuli, and generalizes across visual masks, suppression tasks, and time. We also find that variation in NVPS is unique, in that (...) it cannot be explained by variation in general speed, perceptual decision thresholds, short-term visual memory, or three networks of attention (alerting, orienting and executive). Finally, we find that NVPS is correlated with subjective measures of sensitivity, as they are measured by the Highly Sensitive Person scale. We conclude by discussing the implications of variance in NVPS for understanding individual variance in behavior and the neural substrates of consciousness. (shrink)

There is currently no consensus regarding what measures are most valid to demonstrate perceptual processing without awareness. Likewise, whether conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms or lie on a continuum remains a matter of debate. Here, we addressed these issues by comparing the time courses of subjective reports, objective discrimination performance and response priming during meta-contrast masking, under similar attentional demands. We found these to be strikingly similar, suggesting that conscious perception and unconscious processing cannot be dissociated (...) by their time course. Our results also demonstrate that unconscious processing, indexed by response priming, occurs, and that objective discrimination performance indexes the same conscious processes as subjective visibility reports. Finally, our results underscore the role of attention by showing that how much attention the stimulus receives relative to the mask, rather than whether processing is measured by conscious discrimination or by priming, determines the time course of meta-contrast masking. (shrink)

In general, stimuli that are familiar and recognizable have an advantage of predominance during binocular rivalry. Recent research has demonstrated that familiar and recognizable stimuli such as upright faces and words in a native language could break interocular suppression faster than their matched controls. In this study, a visible word prime was presented binocularly then replaced by a high-contrast dynamic noise pattern presented to one eye and either a semantically related or unrelated word was introduced to the other eye. We (...) measured how long it took for target words to break from suppression. To investigate word-parts priming, a second experiment also included word pairs that had overlapping subword fragments. Results from both experiments consistently show that semantically related words and words that shared subword fragments were faster to gain dominance compared to unrelated words, suggesting that words, even when interocularly suppressed and invisible, can benefit from semantic and subword priming. (shrink)

Many have argued that early visual processing is encapsulated from the influence of higher-level goals, expectations, and knowledge of the world. Here we confront the main arguments offered in support of such a view, showing that they are unpersuasive. We also present evidence of top–down influences on early vision, emphasizing data from cognitive neuroscience. Our conclusion is that encapsulation is not a defining feature of visual processing. But we take this conclusion to be quite modest in scope, readily incorporated into (...) mainstream vision science. (shrink)