A novel technique to study visual processing in the objective absence of awareness M Rothkirch1, P Sterzer2 |
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1Department of Psychiatry, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany |
| The question if and how human behavior can be guided by visual information that the individual is unaware of is still the subject of ongoing research. Critically, when asked for their subjective experience, observers may deny seeing a stimulus despite being partially or even fully aware of it, because subjective reports of (un)awareness depend on observers’ response criterion. By contrast, an objective measure of awareness is uncontaminated by such response biases. Here we present a novel technique for the examination of goal-directed behavior in the objective absence of awareness. During visual search for a stimulus rendered invisible with continuous flash suppression, we performed eyetracking to determine whether participants’ eye movements were influenced by the invisible stimulus. Participants’ objective absence of awareness was ensured by chance accuracy in a concurrently performed manual 2AFC task. Contrary to their manual responses, participants’ eye movements were more frequently directed towards invisible stimuli than would be expected by chance. Our results demonstrate (1) that goal-directed behavior can be performed even in the objective absence of awareness, and (2) that our technique provides a suitable tool to study which stimulus features can guide human behavior even when they do not get access to conscious awareness. |
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