Background: A majority of previous studies appear to support a view that human observers can only perceive coarse information from a natural scene image when it is presented rapidly (<100ms, masked). In these studies, participants were often forced to choose an answer from options that experimenters preselected. These options can underestimate what participants experience and can report on it....
When we look at something, we might feel we see a richly detailed external world, but if being asked, our reports are often limited. This discrepancy is one of the central questions in cognitive science. Despite its fundamental importance, philosophers and psychologists still do not agree on whether our “experience” is rich or sparse, depending on their stance on consciousness and associated...