Visibility, type of masking, prime duration and task as determinants of effects of masked stimuli

可见性、掩蔽类型、黄金持续时间和任务作为掩蔽刺激效果的决定因素

• 批准号: 252287650
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Uwe F. Mattler
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Abteilung für Experimentelle Psychologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2013-12-31 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/252287650?language=en
• 关键词: Visibility; type; masking; prime; duration; Visibility; type; masking; prime; duration

Recent theories state that consciousness is related to the integration and accessibility of information. From this it follows that mental functions exist which do not operate at all or at least operate in an impaired way when consciousness is impaired. More specifically, processing of simple (non-integrated) stimulus features should be independent from consciousness whereas semantic processing of complex (integrated) features should increase with an increasing consciousness of the stimuli. A series of empirical reports support this view. Thus, early perceptual or motor priming effects do not depend on the prime visibility whereas semantic priming effects seem to depend on prime visibility. However, in many studies the manipulation of prime visibility has been confounded with the duration of the primes because trials with short and long prime durations have been compared as unconscious and conscious conditions, respectively. Additionally, semantic studies most often used pattern masking which might produce an artificial correlation between priming effects and prime visibility. Independence of motor priming effects and visibility has been reported frequently from studies that used metacontrast masking. And indeed, our pilot studies show that semantic and motor priming effects depend on prime visibility when pattern masking is used, but not with metacontrast masking. Beyond this, the relation between priming effects and prime visibility could also depend on the processing of the primes which is needed to generate priming effects. The planned project comprises 13 experiments which systematically compare the effects of three different masking procedures (pattern masking, metacontrast, and crowding) when the same stimuli are used in different tasks. Within each experiment, prime visibility is varied by masks of a specific type but with different masking strength and the relationship between priming effects and visibility is recorded. If the processing of the primes in a certain task depends on consciousness of the primes the priming effect should also depend on prime visibility. To grasp also discontinuous relationships, the time that is given to the prime to generate its effects is varied. Functional magnetic resonance imaging is used to examine whether the prime induced cortical activation at later levels of processing in the visual hierarchy is systematically determined by the type of masking procedure used. In this way the expansion of the effects of masked stimuli in the brain and the loci of masking can be directly investigated. The studies of this project contribute to confine the search for the function of consciousness and to improve our understanding of the mechanisms that produce priming effects and the different types of masking effects.

最近的理论表明，意识与信息的集成和访问性有关。由此得出的，存在精神功能根本不起作用，或者至少在意识受损时以受损的方式运行。更具体地说，简单（非集成）刺激特征的处理应独立于意识，而复杂（集成）特征的语义处理应随着刺激的意识的增加而增加。一系列经验报告支持了这一观点。因此，早期感知或运动启动效应不取决于主要的可见性，而语义启动效应似乎取决于主要的可见性。但是，在许多研究中，对主要可见性的操纵与素数的持续时间混淆了，因为已经将短期和长时间持续时间的试验分别与无意识和有意识的条件进行了比较。此外，语义研究最常使用模式掩蔽，这可能会在启动效应和主要可见性之间产生人工相关性。运动启动效应和可见性的独立性经常是通过使用Metaconcontrast掩盖的研究报告的。确实，我们的试点研究表明，语义和运动启动效应取决于使用图案掩盖时的主要可见性，但不使用MetaConcontrast掩盖。除此之外，启动效应和主要可见性之间的关系也可能取决于生成启动效应所需的素数的处理。计划的项目包括13项实验，这些实验将在不同任务中使用相同的刺激时系统地比较了三个不同的掩蔽程序（模式掩蔽，元反对和拥挤）的效果。在每个实验中，主要的可见性通过特定类型的掩模而变化，但具有不同的掩盖强度以及启动效应与可见性之间的关系。如果某个任务中的素数的处理取决于素数的意识，则启动效应也应取决于主要的可见性。为了掌握不连续的关系，产生其效果的素数的时间各不相同。功能磁共振成像用于检查视觉层次结构中后期处理水平的主要诱导皮质激活是否取决于所使用的掩蔽过程的类型。通过这种方式，可以直接研究掩盖刺激在大脑和掩蔽基因座的作用的扩展。该项目的研究有助于局限于寻找意识功能的搜索，并提高我们对产生启动效应的机制和不同类型的掩蔽效应的理解。