The relation between consciousness and attention: An empirical study using the priming paradigm

Bussche, Eva Van den; Hughes, Gethin; Humbeeck, Nathalie Van; Reynvoet, Bert

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2009.12.019

Cited by 42 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In line with their position, there is good evidence that attentional processes, as defined above, can operate without the attended stimuli reaching consciousness (Bressan and Pizzighello, 2008; Kentridge et al, 2008; Bussche et al, 2010; Tapia et al, 2010). For example, Kentridge et al (2008) demonstrated that attention can enhance the processing of unconscious targets: incongruent or congruent colored disk primes, made invisible by metacontrast masking, were followed by a subsequent visible colored annulus.…”

Section: The Overlap Between Attention and Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 76%

Consciousness and the Prefrontal Parietal Network: Insights from Attention, Working Memory, and Chunking

Bor¹,

Seth²

2012

Front. Psychology

121

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Consciousness has of late become a “hot topic” in neuroscience. Empirical work has centered on identifying potential neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), with a converging view that the prefrontal parietal network (PPN) is closely associated with this process. Theoretical work has primarily sought to explain how informational properties of this cortical network could account for phenomenal properties of consciousness. However, both empirical and theoretical research has given less focus to the psychological features that may account for the NCCs. The PPN has also been heavily linked with cognitive processes, such as attention. We describe how this literature is under-appreciated in consciousness science, in part due to the increasingly entrenched assumption of a strong dissociation between attention and consciousness. We argue instead that there is more common ground between attention and consciousness than is usually emphasized: although objects can under certain circumstances be attended to in the absence of conscious access, attention as a content selection and boosting mechanism is an important and necessary aspect of consciousness. Like attention, working memory and executive control involve the interlinking of multiple mental objects and have also been closely associated with the PPN. We propose that this set of cognitive functions, in concert with attention, make up the core psychological components of consciousness. One related process, chunking, exploits logical or mnemonic redundancies in a dataset so that it can be recoded and a given task optimized. Chunking has been shown to activate PPN particularly robustly, even compared with other cognitively demanding tasks, such as working memory or mental arithmetic. It is therefore possible that chunking, as a tool to detect useful patterns within an integrated set of intensely processed (attended) information, has a central role to play in consciousness. Following on from this, we suggest that a key evolutionary purpose of consciousness may be to provide innovative solutions to complex or novel problems.

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Section: The Overlap Between Attention and Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 76%

Consciousness and the Prefrontal Parietal Network: Insights from Attention, Working Memory, and Chunking

Bor¹,

Seth²

2012

Front. Psychology

121

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“…Behavioral (Naccache et al, 2002; Ansorge and Neumann, 2005; Melcher et al, 2005; Sumner et al, 2006; Kentridge et al, 2008; Finkbeiner and Palermo, 2009; Tapia et al, 2010; Van den Bussche et al, 2010) and neuronal (Kiefer and Brendel, 2006) non-conscious priming is enhanced by spatial (Kentridge et al, 2008; Finkbeiner and Palermo, 2009; Van den Bussche et al, 2010), feature-based (Melcher et al, 2005; Tapia et al, 2010), or temporal (i.e., cueing when the prime or targets appear) (Naccache et al, 2002) attention. So far, there is no evidence that object-based attention can give rise to non-conscious priming (Tapia et al, 2010).…”

Section: Attention Without Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness and Attention: On Sufficiency and Necessity

Boxtel¹,

Tsuchiya²,

Koch³

2010

Front. Psychology

195

146

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Recent research has slowly corroded a belief that selective attention and consciousness are so tightly entangled that they cannot be individually examined. In this review, we summarize psychophysical and neurophysiological evidence for a dissociation between top-down attention and consciousness. The evidence includes recent findings that show subjects can attend to perceptually invisible objects. More contentious is the finding that subjects can become conscious of an isolated object, or the gist of the scene in the near absence of top-down attention; we critically re-examine the possibility of “complete” absence of top-down attention. We also cover the recent flurry of studies that utilized independent manipulation of attention and consciousness. These studies have shown paradoxical effects of attention, including examples where top-down attention and consciousness have opposing effects, leading us to strengthen and revise our previous views. Neuroimaging studies with EEG, MEG, and fMRI are uncovering the distinct neuronal correlates of selective attention and consciousness in dissociative paradigms. These findings point to a functional dissociation: attention as analyzer and consciousness as synthesizer. Separating the effects of selective visual attention from those of visual consciousness is of paramount importance to untangle the neural substrates of consciousness from those for attention.

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“…Although the influence of unconscious primes has often been thought a static, uncontrollable process, recently research pointed out that it can be influenced by top-down aspects such as task demands (Norris and Kinoshita, 2008; Martens et al, 2011), attentional focusing (Van den Bussche et al, 2010), and temporal attention (Naccache et al, 2002). Martens et al (2011) used an induction task to activate one of two task sets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, when exactly the same prime–target pairs were used, but now the task was to decide whether the target was the same as a probe, unconscious priming was also observed for non-words. Van den Bussche et al (2010) showed that spatial attention is a prerequisite for subliminal stimuli to be processed. When attention was allocated to another location, primes had no influence on the processing of the target.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Consciousness Necessary for Conflict Adaptation? A State of the Art

Desender¹,

Bussche²

2012

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Facing response conflict, subjects try to improve their responses by reducing the influence of the detrimental information which caused the conflict. It was speculated that this adaptation to conflict can only occur when the conflicting information is consciously perceived. In this review we give an overview of the research looking at the possibility of unconscious stimuli to provoke this conflict adaptation. In a first part we discuss adaptation to conflict on a trial-by-trial basis. When the previous trial contained conflicting information, subjects will adapt to this by reducing the influence of the conflicting information on the current trial. However, the interesting question is whether this is also possible when the conflicting information remains unconscious. In a second part we will discuss blockwise adaptation to conflict. If conflict is very frequent, subjects will adapt to this by reducing the conflicting information sustainably. Again the question is whether this is possible when the conflict was never experienced consciously. In a third part we will discuss the neural basis of conscious and unconscious conflict adaptation. We will critically discuss the research on these topics and highlight strengths and weaknesses of the used paradigms. Finally, we will give some suggestions how future research can be more conclusive in this respect.

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The relation between consciousness and attention: An empirical study using the priming paradigm

Cited by 42 publications

References 22 publications

Consciousness and the Prefrontal Parietal Network: Insights from Attention, Working Memory, and Chunking

Consciousness and the Prefrontal Parietal Network: Insights from Attention, Working Memory, and Chunking

Consciousness and Attention: On Sufficiency and Necessity

Is Consciousness Necessary for Conflict Adaptation? A State of the Art

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