The relationship between the objective identification threshold and priming effects does not provide a definitive boundary between conscious and unconscious perceptual processes

Reversed Priming Effects May Be Driven by Misperception Rather than Subliminal Processing

“…This indicates that participants who generally perceived the primes (based on d′ ) were primed by what they perceived or misperceived, whereas participants who generally did not perceive the primes were neither stroop or reversed primed by what little information they extracted from the primes. This finding is in line with the reports of Haase and Fisk (2015), who also used a stimulus setting that allowed for individual variability in prime perception but is in contrast with other reports that did not (e.g., Greenwald et al, 1995; Fisk and Haase, 2011; Schoeberl et al, 2015). Fisk and Haase (2011) interpreted their lack of a correlation between prime perception and priming as due to variable and small effect sizes, an explanation I agree with.…”

“…This finding is in line with the reports of Haase and Fisk (2015), who also used a stimulus setting that allowed for individual variability in prime perception but is in contrast with other reports that did not (e.g., Greenwald et al, 1995; Fisk and Haase, 2011; Schoeberl et al, 2015). Fisk and Haase (2011) interpreted their lack of a correlation between prime perception and priming as due to variable and small effect sizes, an explanation I agree with. Using regression analysis to investigate whether a process is independent of consciousness has previously been criticized as measurement error, and a restricted range of prime identification performance makes the approach unreliable (Dosher, 1998; Miller, 2000; Sand and Nilsson, under review).…”

“…It is important that such an assessment include both studies that find subliminal effects and studies that do not, as including only studies with positive results overestimates effect sizes (i.e., file drawer bias). This is especially important in this topic as many studies report small effect sizes for subliminal priming (Van den Bussche et al, 2009, 2013; Fisk and Haase, 2011; Haase and Fisk, 2011). …”

P3b, consciousness, and complex unconscious processing

“…Critically, prior work (for a review, see Snodgrass et al, 2004) indicates that when identification d' approximates zero, detection d' is still quite substantial. In Fisk and Haase's (2011) data, for example, detection d' = 2 when identification d' = 0 (p. 1226, Fig. 3B).…”

“…Showing that detection d' approximates zero is the most stringent possible demonstration of subliminality, as it ensures that participants cannot even detect when stimuli are presented at all. Further, detection d's are much more sensitive and stringent than comparable (e.g., two-alternative forced-choice) identification d's (Fisk & Haase, 2011;, at least when word stimuli are used. This may surprise some readers, but makes sense given that any perception whatsoever (even just flicker, a dark fragment, etc.)…”