Perceptual illusions in brief visual presentations.
We often feel that our perceptual experience is richer than what we can express. For instance, when flashed with a large set of letters, we feel that we can see them all, while we can report only a few. However, the nature of this subjective impression remains highly debated: while many favour a dissociation between two forms of consciousness (access vs. phenomenal consciousness), others contend that the richness of phenomenal experience is a mere illusion. Here we addressed this question with a classical partial-report paradigm now modified to include unexpected items in the unreported parts of the stimuli. We show that even in the presence of unexpected pseudo-letters, participants still felt that there were only letters. Additionally, we show that this feeling reflects an illusion whereby participants reconstruct letters using partial letter-like information. We propose that the feeling of seeing emerges from the interplay between partially accessible information and expectations.
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS/EHESS/DEC-ENS, Paris, France. gardelle@ens.fr
Vincent
V
de Gardelle
Jérôme
J
Sackur
Sid
S
Kouider
D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009903:Optical Illusions; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010466:Perceptual Closure; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult