Fleeting Perceptual Experience and the Possibility of Recalling Without Seeing

William Jones,Ellis Luise Gootjes-Dreesbach,Howard Bowman,Hannah Pincham

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-64843-2

William Jones, Ellis Luise Gootjes-Dreesbach + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64843-2

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Abstract

We explore an intensely debated problem in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy: the degree to which the “phenomenological consciousness” of the experience of a stimulus is separable from the “access consciousness” of its reportability. Specifically, it has been proposed that these two measures are dissociated from one another in one, or both directions. However, even if it was agreed that reportability and experience were doubly dissociated, the limits of dissociation logic mean we would not be able to conclusively separate the cognitive processes underlying the two. We take advantage of computational modelling and recent advances in state-trace analysis to assess this dissociation in an attentional/experiential blink paradigm. These advances in state-trace analysis make use of Bayesian statistics to quantify the evidence for and against a dissociation. Further evidence is obtained by linking our finding to a prominent model of the attentional blink – the Simultaneous Type/Serial Token model. Our results show evidence for a dissociation between experience and reportability, whereby participants appear able to encode stimuli into working memory with little, if any, conscious experience of them. This raises the possibility of a phenomenon that might be called sight-blind recall, which we discuss in the context of the current experience/reportability debate.

Highlights

The ability to seperate functionally independent mental processes, and to be able to describe this seperation – or lack thereof – is critical to modern cognitive neuroscience
Tackling such problems is usually performed by looking for functional dissociations. These arise when we find variables that allow us to independently modify performance on two separate tasks, providing putative evidence that the cognitive processes embodied by the tasks are in some way separate
We have examined the evidence for a dissociation between working memory encoding and subjective report in the attentional blink, and developed our own additions to current state-trace methodology

Summary

Introduction

The ability to seperate functionally independent mental processes, and to be able to describe this seperation – or lack thereof – is critical to modern cognitive neuroscience. Having the tools to elicit dissimilar patterns of behaviour is not the same as being able to determine whether the cognitive processes that underlie them are distinct Tackling such problems is usually performed by looking for functional dissociations. These arise when we find variables that allow us to independently modify performance on two separate tasks, providing putative evidence that the cognitive processes embodied by the tasks are in some way separate Such dissociation logic has been widely applied, and made an important contribution to the investigation of functional independence in the mind in such diverse sub-fields as short and long term memory[12], word comprehension[13] and consciousness[14]. For a more detailed discussion on the various potential choices of statistical methods and their respective virtues, see[22]

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