Effects of Voluntary Attention on Structured Afterimages

Lou, Liang

doi:10.1068/p3127

Cited by 32 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…Similarly, attentional withdrawal decreases the size of the aftereffect for real (16,(28)(29)(30) and illusory lines (31), and for motion (32)(33)(34)(35)(36) and face (22) aftereffects. Curiously, though, attentional withdrawal seems to increase the duration of afterimages induced by real (37)(38)(39)(40) and illusory adaptors (41). These latter findings beg the question: Could attention and consciousness affect perception in different and experimentally separable ways, even though up to now they have been found to work synergistically (4,42)?…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

Opposing effects of attention and consciousness on afterimages

Boxtel¹,

Tsuchiya

Koch

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

146

131

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The brain's ability to handle sensory information is influenced by both selective attention and consciousness. There is no consensus on the exact relationship between these two processes and whether they are distinct. So far, no experiment has simultaneously manipulated both. We carried out a full factorial 2 × 2 study of the simultaneous influences of attention and consciousness (as assayed by visibility) on perception, correcting for possible concurrent changes in attention and consciousness. We investigated the duration of afterimages for all four combinations of high versus low attention and visible versus invisible. We show that selective attention and visual consciousness have opposite effects: paying attention to the grating decreases the duration of its afterimage, whereas consciously seeing the grating increases the afterimage duration. These findings provide clear evidence for distinctive influences of selective attention and consciousness on visual perception.ince the latter part of the past century, interest in the influences of selective attention and consciousness on perception has steadily increased. This discussion has raised the question of the relationship between attention and consciousness. By attention, we refer to selective perceptual attention and not vigilance or arousal; by consciousness, we refer to the content of consciousness (sometimes also referred to as awareness), and not to states of consciousness (e.g., wakefulness, dreamless sleep, or coma). Though some claim that both processes are inextricably connected (1-4), others suggest a certain level of independence (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14). Psychophysical studies show that observers can pay attention to an invisible stimulus (15,16), and that a stimulus can be clearly seen in the (near) absence of attention (4,17). Though these data could be explained by arguing that these two processes covary and therefore any increase (respectively decrease) in one is associated with a similar but smaller increase (respectively decrease) in the other, this argument fails if attention and consciousness were to have opposing perceptual effects on the same stimulus. Finding such opponency would considerably strengthen the hypothesis that these processes are distinct (5).Afterimage duration is a well-suited measure for the study of attention and consciousness. Changes in afterimage durations reflect the attentional and visibility manipulations during the afterimage induction phase. This permits the temporal separation of the attentional/visibility manipulations on the afterimage inducer and their subjective monitoring, and the measurement of the resultant effects (e.g., on afterimage appearance). This procedure effectively obviates the need for a simultaneous dual-task procedure.Many afterimage and aftereffect studies are devoted to the influences of attention or consciousness in isolation. For example, removing stimuli from conscious content via various masking techniques that manipulate visibility decreases the motion aftereffect durations ...

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mentioning

confidence: 88%

Opposing effects of attention and consciousness on afterimages

Boxtel¹,

Tsuchiya

Koch

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

146

131

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“…The fifth argument derives from the experiments showing that in some specific conditions attention has an adverse effect on conscious experiences (Lou, 2001; Tsuchiya and Koch, 2009; Rahnev et al, 2011). Voluntary covert attention to color afterimage, afterimage of spatially modulated contrast, or spatially localized motion aftereffect tends to speed up their decay from awareness (Lou, 2001; Suzuki and Grabowecki, 2003; Wede and Francis, 2007; Bachmann and Murd, 2010; van Boxtel et al, 2010a; Murd and Bachmann, 2011).…”

Section: Why It Can Be Said That Attention Is Not the Basis For Conscmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Voluntary covert attention to color afterimage, afterimage of spatially modulated contrast, or spatially localized motion aftereffect tends to speed up their decay from awareness (Lou, 2001; Suzuki and Grabowecki, 2003; Wede and Francis, 2007; Bachmann and Murd, 2010; van Boxtel et al, 2010a; Murd and Bachmann, 2011). Sixth, some aspects of a scene such as the gist or animated objects can be explicitly noticed without attention and without compromising the competing focused attention task (van Boxtel et al, 2010b; see, however, Cohen et al, 2011).…”

Section: Why It Can Be Said That Attention Is Not the Basis For Conscmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention as a Process of Selection, Perception as a Process of Representation, and Phenomenal Experience as the Resulting Process of Perception Being Modulated by a Dedicated Consciousness Mechanism

Bachmann¹

2011

Front. Psychology

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Equivalence of attention and consciousness is disputed and necessity of attentional effects for conscious experience has become questioned. However, the conceptual landscape and interpretations of empirical evidence as related to this issue have remained controversial. Here I present some conceptual distinctions and research strategies potentially useful for moving forward when tackling this issue. Specifically, it is argued that we should carefully differentiate between pre-conscious processes and the processes resulting in phenomenal experience, move the emphasis from studying the effects of attention on the modality-specific and feature-specific perception to studying attentional effects on panmodal universal attributes of whatever conscious experience may be the case, and acknowledge that there is a specialized mechanism for leading to conscious experience of the pre-consciously represented contents autonomous from the mechanisms of perception, attention, memory, and cognitive control.

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“…For example, it has been found that AI of a pattern becomes weaker when the pattern is attended345. Moreover, the perceived size of the inducing stimulus determines the size of the AI6.…”

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confidence: 99%

Cortical mechanisms for afterimage formation: evidence from interocular grouping

Dong

Holm

Bao

2017

Sci Rep

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Whether the retinal process alone or retinal and cortical processes jointly determine afterimage (AI) formation has long been debated. Based on the retinal rebound responses, recent work proposes that afterimage signals are exclusively generated in the retina, although later modified by cortical mechanisms. We tested this notion with the method of “indirect proof”. Each eye was presented with a 2-by-2 checkerboard of horizontal and vertical grating patches. Each corresponding patch of the two checkerboards was perpendicular to each other, which produces binocular rivalry, and can generate percepts ranging from complete interocular grouping to either monocular pattern. The monocular percepts became more frequent with higher contrast. Due to adaptation, the visual system is less sensitive during the AIs than during the inductions with AI-similar contrast. If the retina is the only origin of AIs, comparable contrast appearance would require stronger retinal signals in the AIs than in the inductions, thus leading to more frequent monocular percepts in the AIs than in the inductions. Surprisingly, subjects saw the fully coherent stripes significantly more often in AIs. Our results thus contradict the retinal generation notion, and suggest that in addition to the retina, cortex is directly involved in the generation of AI signals.

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Effects of Voluntary Attention on Structured Afterimages

Cited by 32 publications

References 18 publications

Opposing effects of attention and consciousness on afterimages

Opposing effects of attention and consciousness on afterimages

Attention as a Process of Selection, Perception as a Process of Representation, and Phenomenal Experience as the Resulting Process of Perception Being Modulated by a Dedicated Consciousness Mechanism

Cortical mechanisms for afterimage formation: evidence from interocular grouping

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