Abstract
This article discusses how the analysis of interactions between action and awareness allows us to better understand the mechanisms of visual awareness. We argue that action is one of several factors that influence visual awareness and we provide a number of examples. We also discuss the possible mechanisms that underlie these influences on both the cognitive and the neural levels. We propose that action affects visual awareness for the following reasons: (1) it serves as additional information in the process of evidence accumulation; (2) it restricts the number of alternatives in the decisional process; (3) it enables error detection and performance monitoring; and (4) it triggers attentional mechanisms that modify stimulus perception. We also discuss the possible neuronal mechanisms of the aforementioned effects, including feedback-dependent prefrontal cortex modulation of the activity of visual areas, error-based modulation, interhemispheric inhibition of motor cortices, and attentional modulation of visual cortex activity triggered by motor processing.
Highlights
This article discusses how the analysis of interactions between action and awareness allows us to better understand the mechanisms of visual awareness
Visual awareness can be measured by different subjective scales that allow assessment of changes in visual awareness level, such as the Perceptual Awareness Scale or Confidence Ratings (Norman & Price, 2015; Sandberg et al, 2010)
The notion of the gradualness of visual awareness can be understood in at least two ways: First, it can pertain to the dynamics of the transition from unconscious to conscious processing, or accumulation of perceptual evidence in time (Anzulewicz et al, 2015, and see Dehaene, 2008), as reflected in the question “is there a clear threshold that a representation needs to pass to enable conscious access?” Second, it could be related to the quality of conscious content, namely how many levels of stimulus clarity can be distinguished between complete unawareness and full awareness of a stimulus
Summary
What factors shape visual awareness? This question addresses the central problem in this research area: the cognitive and neural mechanisms of awareness. Some other factors have recently been proposed, such as expectations (Kok, Jehee, & de Lange, 2012; Melloni, Schwiedrzik, Muller, Rodriguez, & Singer, 2011; Pinto, van Gaal, de Lange, Lamme, & Seth, 2015), previous experience (Cleeremans & French, 2002), context (Kveraga, Ghuman, & Bar, 2007), and performance feedback (Siedlecka, Wereszczyński, Paulewicz, & Wierzchoń, 2019) This empirical evidence is accompanied by the development of theoretical models of visual awareness that discuss different factors that may influence visual awareness (Fazekas & Overgaard, 2018; Hohwy, 2013; Park & TallonBaudry, 2014). We bring action into the picture and investigate how it can influence visual awareness
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