title: Integration without awareness: expanding the limits of unconscious processing.
abstract: Human conscious awareness is commonly seen as the climax of evolution. However, what function-if any-it serves in human behavior is still debated. One of the leading suggestions is that the cardinal function of conscious awareness is to integrate numerous inputs-including the multitude of features and objects in a complex scene-across different levels of analysis into a unified, coherent, and meaningful perceptual experience. Here we demonstrate, however, that integration of objects with their background scenes can be achieved without awareness of either. We used a binocular rivalry technique known as continuous flash suppression to induce perceptual suppression in a group of human observers. Complex scenes that included incongruent objects escaped perceptual suppression faster than normal scenes did. We conclude that visual awareness is not needed for object-background integration or for processing the likelihood of an object to appear within a given semantic context, but may be needed for dealing with novel situations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Israel. liadmu@gmail.com
authors.forename: Liad
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mudrik
authors.forename: Assaf
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Breska
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lamy
authors.forename: Leon Y
authors.initials: LY
authors.lastname: Deouell
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness; D003071:Cognition; D003243:Consciousness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult