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