Abstract
In several visual tasks, participants report that they feel confident about discrimination responses at a level of stimulation at which they would report not seeing the stimulus. How general and reliable is this effect? We compared subjective reports of discrimination confidence and subjective reports of visibility in an orientation discrimination task with varying stimulus contrast. Participants applied more liberal criteria for subjective reports of discrimination confidence than for visibility. While reports of discrimination confidence were more efficient in predicting trial accuracy than reports of visibility, only reports of visibility but not confidence were associated with stimulus contrast in incorrect trials. It is argued that the distinction between discrimination confidence and visibility can be reconciled with both the partial awareness hypothesis and higher order thought theory. We suggest that consciousness research would benefit from differentiating between subjective reports of visibility and confidence.
Highlights
In the field of consciousness research, two general approaches to measuring conscious awareness are often distinguished: objective measures and subjective measures (Cheesman and Merikle, 1984; Seth et al, 2008)
The main argument why objective measures should be accompanied by subjective measures relies on the premise that conscious experiences are not necessarily in accordance with performance in discrimination tasks (Lau, 2008b; Seth et al, 2008)
We provided participants with feedback about incorrect discrimination judgments after their subjective reports to maintain consistency with existing studies on discrimination confidence (Pleskac and Busemeyer, 2010; Moran et al, 2015) and our own previous study (Zehetleitner and Rausch, 2013)
Summary
In the field of consciousness research, two general approaches to measuring conscious awareness are often distinguished: objective measures and subjective measures (Cheesman and Merikle, 1984; Seth et al, 2008). The main argument why objective measures should be accompanied by subjective measures relies on the premise that conscious experiences are not necessarily in accordance with performance in discrimination tasks (Lau, 2008b; Seth et al, 2008). The standard example is blindsight, which is caused by lesions to primary visual cortex These patients report to be blind in the visual hemifield contralateral to the damaged brain area. Despite their apparent blindness to stimuli presented in their visual field corresponding to the lesion, these patients are able to perform well above chance in forced-choice tasks (Weiskrantz, 1986). There may be cases where conscious experience exceeds the manifest discrimination
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call