title: Scene Integration Without Awareness: No Conclusive Evidence for Processing Scene Congruency During Continuous Flash Suppression.
abstract: A recent study showed that scenes with an object-background relationship that is semantically incongruent break interocular suppression faster than scenes with a semantically congruent relationship. These results implied that semantic relations between the objects and the background of a scene could be extracted in the absence of visual awareness of the stimulus. In the current study, we assessed the replicability of this finding and tried to rule out an alternative explanation dependent on low-level differences between the stimuli. Furthermore, we used a Bayesian analysis to quantify the evidence in favor of the presence or absence of a scene-congruency effect. Across three experiments, we found no convincing evidence for a scene-congruency effect or a modulation of scene congruency by scene inversion. These findings question the generalizability of previous observations and cast doubt on whether genuine semantic processing of object-background relationships in scenes can manifest during interocular suppression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognition, University of Leuven pieter.moors@kuleuven.be.
authors.forename: Pieter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Moors
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognition, University of Leuven.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Boelens
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognition, University of Leuven.
authors.forename: Jaana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van Overwalle
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognition, University of Leuven.
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wagemans
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D012660:Semantics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: consciousness; open data; subliminal perception; visual perception