File Download
Supplementary
-
Citations:
- Appears in Collections:
Conference Paper: A distinction between perceptual blindness and attentional blindness (II): backward masking versus attentional blink
Title | A distinction between perceptual blindness and attentional blindness (II): backward masking versus attentional blink |
---|---|
Authors | |
Keywords | Medical sciences Ophthalmology and optometry |
Issue Date | 2009 |
Publisher | Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. The Journal's web site is located at http://wwwjournalofvisionorg/ |
Citation | The 9th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS 2009), Naples, FL., 8-13 May 2009. In Journal of Vision, 2009, v. 9 n. 8, article 155 How to Cite? |
Abstract | Various psychophysical techniques have been proven successful tools to render visual inputs subjectively invisible. For example, backward masking obstructs the awareness of a prior stimulus, and the masked stimulus remains invisible even with full attention at the correct spatiotemporal location. In contrast, observers would miss the presence of a strong stimulus if their attention were not directed to the stimulus. These two examples both demonstrate observers' failure to detect a stimulus. However, it remains unknown whether the nature of unawareness between those techniques is the same. Here we developed a method for classifying different types of psychophysical blinding techniques such as in current study, backward masking and attentional blink (AB). In experiment 1, we impaired the visibility of a target luminance blob by presenting a mask immediately after. The observers' detection accuracy deteriorated as a function of ISI between the target and the mask. In experiment 2, we used AB to impair the visibility of the letter ‘X’ embedded in a RSVP letter stream by manipulating the lag between letter ‘X’ and another attention-catching marker. In both experiments, the target was presented on half of the trials, and subjects were asked to report the presence or absence of the target together with their subjective confidence rating (high/med/low).
Our analysis showed that subjects were equally highly confident in reporting absence in ‘missed’ and ‘correct-rejection’ trials in backward masking, suggesting the unaware experience due to backward masking (miss) is subjectively similar to physical absence (correct-rejection). In AB, observers' confidence decreased together with the objective performance, implying that observers were aware of the transient attentional impairment. This distinct pattern in confidence rating supports the hypothesis that impairments in unconscious perception can be classified into sensory and attentional mechanisms, and this is in line with the view that perceptual (un)awareness involves multi-stage processing. |
Description | Open Access Journal This journal issue is the VSS 2009 Meeting abstracts |
Persistent Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/132205 |
ISSN | 2023 Impact Factor: 2.0 2023 SCImago Journal Rankings: 0.849 |
DC Field | Value | Language |
---|---|---|
dc.contributor.author | Tseng, C | en_US |
dc.contributor.author | Kanai, R | en_US |
dc.contributor.author | Lin, YL | en_US |
dc.contributor.author | Walsh, V | en_US |
dc.date.accessioned | 2011-03-21T09:01:37Z | - |
dc.date.available | 2011-03-21T09:01:37Z | - |
dc.date.issued | 2009 | en_US |
dc.identifier.citation | The 9th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS 2009), Naples, FL., 8-13 May 2009. In Journal of Vision, 2009, v. 9 n. 8, article 155 | en_US |
dc.identifier.issn | 1534-7362 | - |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/132205 | - |
dc.description | Open Access Journal | - |
dc.description | This journal issue is the VSS 2009 Meeting abstracts | - |
dc.description.abstract | Various psychophysical techniques have been proven successful tools to render visual inputs subjectively invisible. For example, backward masking obstructs the awareness of a prior stimulus, and the masked stimulus remains invisible even with full attention at the correct spatiotemporal location. In contrast, observers would miss the presence of a strong stimulus if their attention were not directed to the stimulus. These two examples both demonstrate observers' failure to detect a stimulus. However, it remains unknown whether the nature of unawareness between those techniques is the same. Here we developed a method for classifying different types of psychophysical blinding techniques such as in current study, backward masking and attentional blink (AB). In experiment 1, we impaired the visibility of a target luminance blob by presenting a mask immediately after. The observers' detection accuracy deteriorated as a function of ISI between the target and the mask. In experiment 2, we used AB to impair the visibility of the letter ‘X’ embedded in a RSVP letter stream by manipulating the lag between letter ‘X’ and another attention-catching marker. In both experiments, the target was presented on half of the trials, and subjects were asked to report the presence or absence of the target together with their subjective confidence rating (high/med/low). Our analysis showed that subjects were equally highly confident in reporting absence in ‘missed’ and ‘correct-rejection’ trials in backward masking, suggesting the unaware experience due to backward masking (miss) is subjectively similar to physical absence (correct-rejection). In AB, observers' confidence decreased together with the objective performance, implying that observers were aware of the transient attentional impairment. This distinct pattern in confidence rating supports the hypothesis that impairments in unconscious perception can be classified into sensory and attentional mechanisms, and this is in line with the view that perceptual (un)awareness involves multi-stage processing. | - |
dc.language | eng | en_US |
dc.publisher | Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. The Journal's web site is located at http://wwwjournalofvisionorg/ | - |
dc.relation.ispartof | Journal of Vision | en_US |
dc.subject | Medical sciences | - |
dc.subject | Ophthalmology and optometry | - |
dc.title | A distinction between perceptual blindness and attentional blindness (II): backward masking versus attentional blink | en_US |
dc.type | Conference_Paper | en_US |
dc.identifier.email | Tseng, C: tseng@hku.hk | en_US |
dc.identifier.authority | Tseng, C=rp00640 | en_US |
dc.description.nature | link_to_OA_fulltext | - |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1167/9.8.155 | - |
dc.identifier.hkuros | 177450 | en_US |
dc.identifier.volume | 9 | en_US |
dc.identifier.issue | 8 | en_US |
dc.publisher.place | United States | - |
dc.description.other | The 9th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS 2009), Naples, FL., 8-13 May 2009. In Journal of Vision, 2009, v. 9 n. 8, article 155 | - |
dc.identifier.issnl | 1534-7362 | - |