TITLE:
Pure Partial Awareness or Interaction between the Mask and the Masked Stimuli?
AUTHORS:
Jiangong Guo, Chengzhen Liu, Jerwen Jou, Qian Cui, Guang Zhao, Shen Tu
KEYWORDS:
Masking, Unconscious Processing, Partial Awareness, Interaction Hypothesis, Level of Processing Hypothesis
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.7 No.6,
June
1,
2016
ABSTRACT: Many studies using masking paradigm have
shown that stimuli can be processed unconsciously. However, different
researchers put forward different ideas about the mechanisms of the unconscious
information processing. For example, one idea is that the unconscious
information might be derived from a partial awareness of the masked stimulus.
Another idea is that it is derived from a perceptual interaction between a
masked stimulus and the masking stimulus. We used a masking paradigm (with a
briefly displayed target followed by a mask) and a subjective rating and an
objective forced-choice test (with a word and picture version) given after the
display to study the nature of partial awareness. The question we attempted to
answer was whether people did perceive fragmentary features of a masked object
picture correctly when they rated it as partially perceivable. The results
showed that even when the masked stimuli only had simple features and when the
subjects subjectively reported that they could perceive something of the masked
stimuli, the objective forced-choice test performance was at chance level. The
results were discussed in the context of interaction hypothesis and level of
processing hypothesis.