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Fleeting Perceptual Experience and the Possibility of Recalling Without Seeing

Jones, William, Pincham, Hannah, Gootjes-Dreesbach, Ellis Luise, Bowman, Howard (2020) Fleeting Perceptual Experience and the Possibility of Recalling Without Seeing. Scientific Reports, 10 (8540). ISSN 2045-2322. (doi:10.1038/s41598-020-64843-2) (KAR id:81206)

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Abstract

We explore an intensely debated problem in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy: the degree to which the “phenomenological consciousness” of the experience of a stimulus is separable from the “access consciousness” of its reportability. Specifically, it has been proposed that these two measures are dissociated from one another in one, or both directions. However, even if it was agreed that reportability and experience were doubly dissociated, the limits of dissociation logic mean we would not be able to conclusively separate the cognitive processes underlying the two. We take advantage of computational modelling and recent advances in state-trace analysis to assess this dissociation in an attentional/experiential blink paradigm. These advances in state-trace analysis make use of Bayesian statistics to quantify the evidence for and against a dissociation. Further evidence is obtained by linking our finding to a prominent model of the attentional blink – the Simultaneous Type/Serial Token model. Our results show evidence for a dissociation between experience and reportability, whereby participants appear able to encode stimuli into working memory with little, if any, conscious experience of them. This raises the possibility of a phenomenon that might be called sight-blind recall, which we discuss in the context of the current experience/reportability debate.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1038/s41598-020-64843-2
Uncontrolled keywords: Conscious Perception, Experiential Blink, Simultaneous Type/ Serial Token model, EEG
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Howard Bowman
Date Deposited: 13 May 2020 13:11 UTC
Last Modified: 10 Jan 2024 08:55 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/81206 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Jones, William.

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Gootjes-Dreesbach, Ellis Luise.

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Bowman, Howard.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4736-1869
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