Abstract
Color can enhance the perception of relevant stimuli by increasing their salience and guiding visual search towards stimuli that match a task-relevant color. Using Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS), the current study investigated whether color facilitates the discrimination of targets that are difficult to perceive due to interocular suppression. Gabor patterns of two or four cycles per degree (cpd) were shown as targets to the non-dominant eye of human participants. CFS masks were presented at a rate of 10 Hz to the dominant eye, and participants had the task to report the target’s orientation as soon as they could discriminate it. The 2-cpd targets were robustly suppressed and resulted in much longer response times compared to 4-cpd targets. Moreover, only for 2-cpd targets, two color-related effects were evident. First, in trials where targets and CFS masks had different colors, targets were reported faster than in trials where targets and CFS masks had the same color. Second, targets with a known color, either cyan or yellow, were reported earlier than targets whose color was randomly cyan or yellow. The results suggest that the targets’ entry to consciousness may have been speeded by color-mediated effects relating to increased (bottom-up) salience and (top-down) task relevance.
Highlights
The analysis revealed a main effect of target/Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) color, F(1, 39) = 15.1, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.28, with, on average, shorter breakthrough times when the target and the CFS mask had different colors (M = 2366 ms, SE = 190.5) compared to when they had the same color (M = 2604 ms, SE = 196.6)
The current study investigated whether and how color facilitates perception of relevant target stimuli that are difficult to discriminate due to interocular suppression
The efficacy of CFS was manipulated by using either low spatial frequency (LSF) targets
Summary
Local color contrasts increase the bottom-up salience of an object [5,6], which in turn attracts spatial attention to the object’s location, resulting in prioritized neurocognitive processing of the attended information [7]. While it is well established that color is a powerful feature for guiding selective visual attention, it is not entirely clear through which mechanisms color affects how quickly an object is consciously perceived [10]. A traditional view of the relationship between attention and consciousness posits that attention acts as a ‘gatekeeper for consciousness’, that is, that the selection of a stimulus by attention precedes conscious perception [11,12,13]. Attention and consciousness are distinct processes that are not always aligned [14], which is why top-down attention does not necessarily entail conscious processing [10,15]
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