“Conscious Researchers in Unconscious Research”: A Motivational Revisit of Issues, Resolutions, and Applied Awareness in Backward Masking using Faces

Abstract

In this manuscript, we provide a discourse of issues and resolutions that we should be conscious of when doing research in the unconscious using backward masking of faces. First, we revisit subjects that are contributing for understanding the unconscious as a concept. These involve historical episodes and early episodes of controversial experimentation. Subsequently, we revisit and discuss topical concepts, such as the metrics and the statistical analyses applied for assessing perception during backward masking. We proceed to discussing novel and developing issues relating to masked visual processing and contemporary psychophysics. We empirically illustrate how these issues bias experimental research. We present and empirically illustrate resolutions for these issues, such as the application of signal detection theory metrics, Bayesian analysis and advances in the psychophysics of masked presentations using faces. We assess whether and the extent to which we are truly conscious of established and known, and novel and developing issues and resolutions. We make use of backward masking as a rally point to emphasize the importance of conscious scholarly and methodological awareness for undertaking and advancing research in the unconscious.

Unbiased Individual Unconsciousness: Rationale, Replication and Developing Applications

“…It is a research area involving intense, unrelenting and unresolved academic debates. Research in the unconscious was contentious since its "first steps" (Ebbinghaus,1908;Field, Aveling & Laird, 1922;Miller, 1942;Kahn, 1943;Fechner, 1948;Goldiamond, 1958; for an overview see Tsikandilakis, Bali, Derrfuss & Chapman, 2019) to itsso to speak -"mid-life crisis" (Burnham, 1967;Dixon, 1971;1981;Goodkin & Phillips, 1980;Merikle & Cheesman, 1987;Frosh, 1989;Bornstein, 1989; for an overview see Tsikandilakis, Bali, Yu, Madan, Derrfuss, Chapman & Groeger, 2021) and has grown methodologically contentious, now, more than ever, among contemporary psychologists (see Bar & Biederman, 1998;Erdelyi, 2005;Pessoa & Adolphs, 2010;Elgendi, Kumar, Barbic, Howard, Abbott & Cichocki, 2018; for an overview see Tsikandilakis et al, 2022d).…”

“…These included several issues, such as the use of biased metrics for the assessment of perception during visual suppression (Stanislaw & Todorov, 1999;Zhang & Mueller, 2005;Swets, 2014;Hautus, Macmillan & Creelman, 2021) and the use of inconclusive statistical procedures for inferring whether participants were unconscious of visually suppressed stimuli (Dienes, 2014;Kruschke& Liddell, 2018;Heck et al, 2022). These also spanned to other issues, such as the use of potentially unreliable methods for implementing psychophysics-related image processing manipulations, the type of masking applied to visually suppressed stimuli, and the unresolved problem of failing to achieve unbiased evidence for unconsciousness using static durations of presentation (e.g., 8.33 or 16.67 or 25 or 33.33 ms) (see Tsikandilakis, Bali, Derrfuss & Chapman, 2019;Tsikandilakis, Bali, Madan, Derrfuss, Chapman & Groeger, 2021;Tsikandilakis et al, 2022d). The explicit outlining of these tangible problems had a paradoxical effect (Bargh & Morsella, 2008): it restored a quantum of confidence in the future of research into the unconscious.…”

“…These concepts have been frequently discoursed (see Tsikandilakis, Bali, Yu, Madan, Chapman & Groeger, 2021) but infrequently applied (van der Ploeg, Brosschot, Versluis & Verkuil, 2017; see particularly Tsikandilakis et al, 2022d;pp. 16-17).…”

“…The justifications of these differences in perceptual ability have been attributed to differences in attentional and cognitive resources of individual participants (Barrett, Tugade & Engle, 2004;Bishop, 2008;Kaspar & König, 2012). They have also been attributed to the evolutionary value (Öhman, 2009), low-spatial frequencies (De Gardelle & Kouider, 2010) and high-level component characteristics (Guenter, Grimm, Wood, Malvar, & Pighin, 1998) of different elicitor types that are discoursed at length in previous publications (see for example Tsikandilakis, Bali, Derrfuss, & Chapman, 2019;Tsikandilakis et al, 2022d).…”

“…The overarching aim of the current work is not merely to review thesearguably (Tsikandilakis et al, 2022d) known and extensively discoursed subjects (see Pessoa, 2004;Japee, Crocker, Carver, Pessoa & Ungerleider, 2009;Pessoa & Adolphs, 2010); it is to show how to overcome them. We present here in full the rationale and a methodology for replication for attaining unbiased individual unconsciousness.…”