A dissociation of attention and awareness in phase-sensitive but not phase-insensitive visual channels.

The elements most vivid in our conscious awareness are the ones to which we direct our attention. Scientific study confirms the impression of a close bond between selective attention and visual awareness, yet the nature of this association remains elusive. Using visual afterimages as an index, we investigate neural processing of stimuli as they enter awareness and as they become the object of attention.

Multi-timescale perceptual history resolves visual ambiguity.

When visual input is inconclusive, does previous experience aid the visual system in attaining an accurate perceptual interpretation? Prolonged viewing of a visually ambiguous stimulus causes perception to alternate between conflicting interpretations. When viewed intermittently, however, ambiguous stimuli tend to evoke the same percept on many consecutive presentations. This perceptual stabilization has been suggested to reflect persistence of the most recent percept throughout the blank that separates two presentations.

Flash suppression and flash facilitation in binocular rivalry.

We show that previewing one half image of a binocular rivalry pair can cause it to gain initial dominance when the other half is added, a novel phenomenon we term flash facilitation. This is the converse of a known effect called flash suppression, where the previewed image becomes suppressed upon rivalrous presentation. The exact effect of previewing an image depends on both the duration and the contrast of the prior stimulus.

Disruption of implicit perceptual memory by intervening neutral stimuli.

After viewing directional motion, one is likely to perceive a subsequently presented directionally ambiguous motion as being in the same direction as the prior motion. The perceptual bias towards the most recent percept gradually develops as the interval between the prior stimulus and a subsequent test becomes longer. This form of positive bias, or priming, is created in an automatic fashion.