Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli.
Cueing attention after the disappearance of visual stimuli biases which items will be remembered best. This observation has historically been attributed to the influence of attention on memory as opposed to subjective visual experience. We recently challenged this view by showing that cueing attenti...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2016-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4749386?pdf=render |
| _version_ | 1811200953027657728 |
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| author | Louis Thibault Ronald van den Berg Patrick Cavanagh Claire Sergent |
| author_facet | Louis Thibault Ronald van den Berg Patrick Cavanagh Claire Sergent |
| author_sort | Louis Thibault |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Cueing attention after the disappearance of visual stimuli biases which items will be remembered best. This observation has historically been attributed to the influence of attention on memory as opposed to subjective visual experience. We recently challenged this view by showing that cueing attention after the stimulus can improve the perception of a single Gabor patch at threshold levels of contrast. Here, we test whether this retro-perception actually increases the frequency of consciously perceiving the stimulus, or simply allows for a more precise recall of its features. We used retro-cues in an orientation-matching task and performed mixture-model analysis to independently estimate the proportion of guesses and the precision of non-guess responses. We find that the improvements in performance conferred by retrospective attention are overwhelmingly determined by a reduction in the proportion of guesses, providing strong evidence that attracting attention to the target's location after its disappearance increases the likelihood of perceiving it consciously. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T02:12:52Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-d26fe193ed7744c3b1d9cd47a3126ca3 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T02:12:52Z |
| publishDate | 2016-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-d26fe193ed7744c3b1d9cd47a3126ca32022-12-22T03:52:20ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032016-01-01112e014850410.1371/journal.pone.0148504Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli.Louis ThibaultRonald van den BergPatrick CavanaghClaire SergentCueing attention after the disappearance of visual stimuli biases which items will be remembered best. This observation has historically been attributed to the influence of attention on memory as opposed to subjective visual experience. We recently challenged this view by showing that cueing attention after the stimulus can improve the perception of a single Gabor patch at threshold levels of contrast. Here, we test whether this retro-perception actually increases the frequency of consciously perceiving the stimulus, or simply allows for a more precise recall of its features. We used retro-cues in an orientation-matching task and performed mixture-model analysis to independently estimate the proportion of guesses and the precision of non-guess responses. We find that the improvements in performance conferred by retrospective attention are overwhelmingly determined by a reduction in the proportion of guesses, providing strong evidence that attracting attention to the target's location after its disappearance increases the likelihood of perceiving it consciously.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4749386?pdf=render |
| spellingShingle | Louis Thibault Ronald van den Berg Patrick Cavanagh Claire Sergent Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli. PLoS ONE |
| title | Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli. |
| title_full | Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli. |
| title_fullStr | Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli. |
| title_short | Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli. |
| title_sort | retrospective attention gates discrete conscious access to past sensory stimuli |
| url | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4749386?pdf=render |
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