title: Natural-scene perception requires attention.
abstract: Is visual attention required for visual consciousness? In the past decade, many researchers have claimed that awareness can arise in the absence of attention. This claim is largely based on the notion that natural scene (or "gist") perception occurs without attention. This article presents evidence against this idea. We show that when observers perform a variety of demanding, sustained-attention tasks, inattentional blindness occurs for natural scenes. In addition, scene perception is impaired under dual-task conditions, but only when the primary task is sufficiently demanding. This finding suggests that previous studies that have been interpreted as demonstrating scene perception without attention failed to fully engage attention and that natural-scene perception does indeed require attention. Thus, natural-scene perception is not a preattentive process and cannot be used to support the idea of awareness without attention.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. michaelthecohen@gmail.com
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: George A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Alvarez
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nakayama
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D003243:Consciousness; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult