Invisible, but how? The depth of unconscious processing as inferred from different suppression techniques

Abstract

To what level are invisible stimuli processed by the brain in the absence of conscious awareness? Taking stock of the evidence to this day, it is widely accepted that simple visual properties of invisible stimuli are processed; however, the existence of higher-level unconscious processing (e.g., involving semantic or executive functions) remains a matter of debate. After several years of research in the field of unconscious processing, we became aware of a number of methodological aspects which need to be controlled carefully to help resolve discrepant findings in the literature. These aspects relate to: (1) when and how visibility is assessed; (2) when and how unconscious processing is assessed; (3) whether spatiotemporal attention is directed or, at least, measured; (4) whether adequate control conditions are used to rule out alternate explanations; (5) whether the studies are sufficiently powered and account for individual differences. Yet even when these aspects are carefully controlled, there may be, and probably are, some inherent differences in the amount of information let through by the different invisibility-inducing techniques (the "psychophysical magic" arsenal, Kim and Blake, 2005). We launched this Research Topic to foster investigations into these inherent differences (note previous attempts, Breitmeyer et al., 2004; Almeida et al., 2008; Kanai et al., 2010; Faivre et al., 2012).

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