2010 Student Research Conference:
23rd Annual Student Research Conference

Inter-modal Guidance of Visual Attention in the Absence of Consciousness
Patrick C. Hess*, Kimberly F. Suozzi, Stefan J. Krueger, and Jen G. Pearlstein
Dr. Terry Palmer, Faculty Mentor

Previous research suggests that visual attention can be allocated to an unconsciously perceived (suppressed) scene on the basis of objects within that scene (Jiang, Costello, Fang, Huang, and He, 2006). The present study tests whether such attention guidance can also occur on the basis of meaning derived from the integration of suppressed visual stimuli and consciously processed auditory information. Six participants were presented with 256 trials in which their task was to detect and recognize a visual target. The target was preceded by two suppressed lip-movements, presented side-by-side, as well as by a speech sound corresponding to one of these lip-movements. None of the participants reported any of the lip-movements, yet target recognition was significantly higher for targets occurring at the same location as the lip-movement corresponding to the speech sound.

Keywords: vision, perception, attention, unconscious perception, McGurk effect

Topic(s):Psychology

Presentation Type: Poster

Session: 3-7
Location: SUB-GEO
Time: 4:15

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