title: Early visual processing allows for selective behavior, shifts of attention, and conscious visual experience in spite of masking.
abstract: Object-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a briefly displayed target in a search array is surrounded by a mask, which remains onscreen after the target has disappeared. It has been suggested that OSM results from a specific interference with reentrant visual processing, while the initial feedforward processing is left intact. Here, we tested the prediction that the fastest saccadic responses towards a masked target, supposedly triggered before the onset of reentrant processing, are not impaired by OSM. Indeed, saccades faster than 350ms "escaped" the influence of the mask. Notably, participants' judgements of subjective awareness indicated that stimulus processing during this early stage is not entirely devoid of conscious awareness. Furthermore, the N2pc event-related potential component indicated shifts of spatial attention towards the masked targets on trials with correct fast saccades, suggesting that both target detection and spatial attention can be based on the computations accomplished during the initial feedforward sweep.
authors.affiliation: Université de Toulouse, UPS, Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Toulouse, France; CerCo, CNRS UMR 5549, Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: Sébastien M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Crouzet
authors.affiliation: Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Lyudmyla Y
authors.initials: LY
authors.lastname: Kovalenko
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit, Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Consciousness Lab, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.
authors.forename: Simon Hviid
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Del Pin
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit, Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
authors.forename: Morten
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Overgaard
authors.affiliation: Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; Institute of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany. Electronic address: niko.busch@wwu.de.
authors.forename: Niko A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Busch
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004585:Electrooculography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult