Priming by motion too rapid to be consciously seen

Abstract

When a rapidly rotating ring of dots was briefly flashed, observers saw only a solid ring with no discriminable rotation. However, when this stimulus served as a prime that was followed by a target that consisted of a clearly rotating ring of dots, response times (RTs) to report the target's rotation were shorter when the prime and target directions were congruent than when they were incongruent. In accord with shape priming data, this priming effect increased monotonically with the prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). The prime also biased the perceived direction of an ambiguous apparent motion target, but only at an intermediate SOA. At the same SOA, we also found that target presentations enabled above-chance discrimination of prime's rotation direction. These outcomes demonstrate the processing of motion direction information that is not phenomenally represented. They suggest a common mechanism may mediate the priming of RTs by shape and motion, whereas a different mechanism mediates perceptual measures of motion priming.