Working memory biasing of visual perception without awareness

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that the contents of visual working memory can bias visual processing in favor of matching stimuli in the scene. However, the extent to which such top-down, memory-driven biasing of visual perception is contingent on conscious awareness remains unknown. Here we showed that conscious awareness of critical visual cues is dispensable for working memory to bias perceptual selection mechanisms. Using the procedure of continuous flash suppression, we demonstrated that "unseen" visual stimuli during interocular suppression can gain preferential access to awareness if they match the contents of visual working memory. Strikingly, the very same effect occurred even when the visual cue to be held in memory was rendered nonconscious by masking. Control experiments ruled out the alternative accounts of repetition priming and different detection criteria. We conclude that working memory biases of visual perception can operate in the absence of conscious awareness.

Different effects of executive and visuospatial working memory on visual consciousness

“…Results showed that visuospatial WM content influenced the awareness threshold for the circles; it was lower when the circle's color matched the color maintained in WM compared with when the circle's color differed from that in WM. Similar results were obtained in a series of experiments by Pan, Lin, Zhao, and Soto (2014) in which the awareness threshold in a face detection task was lower when the target face on the screen was identical to the face that participants stored in memory. Together, these studies suggest that the content in visuospatial WM can influence the threshold for visual awareness, with WM possibly biasing the competition for conscious access.…”

Maintenance of non-consciously presented information engages the prefrontal cortex

“…Furthermore, they showed that transcranial direct current stimulation of the PFC modulated performance, demonstrating that the PFC is causally involved in such delayed performance. Pan et al (2013) demonstrated that when a non-consciously maintained item matched an interocularly suppressed item, the latter had prior entry into conscious awareness compared to non-matching items. Critically, none of the results above can be explained by priming mechanisms, because Soto et al (2011) and Dutta et al (2014) used delayed cue-target orientation discrimination tasks where cue and target never matched, and Pan et al (2013) did several control experiments to show that mere exposure to the masked stimulus was not enough for prior entry, it had to be actively maintained.…”

“…Contrary to this prediction however, recent research has suggested that working memory operations could account for the durable retention of non-conscious representations (Soto et al, 2011; Pan et al, 2013; Soto and Silvanto, 2014). Furthermore, Dutta et al (2014) have demonstrated BOLD signal increase in PPN during a delayed cue-target orientation discrimination task with non-conscious sample presentations.…”

Between-Subject Variability in the Breaking Continuous Flash Suppression Paradigm: Potential Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

“…The most reliable manipulation of stimulus context arguably consists of manipulating the concurrent content of visual working memory. Applying this manipulation revealed that visual input that matches concurrently memorized visual features (such as a color or shape) is released from interocular suppression faster than visual input that mismatches the concurrently memorized content (Gayet et al, 2013, 2016a; Pan et al, 2014; van Moorselaar et al, 2015, 2016; Gayet, 2016). …”